


The Peace of Wild Things

by the_desk_fairy



Category: 19th Century CE RPF, American Civil War RPF, Real Person Fiction, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: 404 Ben Solo Not Found, Alternate Universe - Western, Cattle ranching —but make it sexy, Cowboy Hux, F/M, Gingerrose - Freeform, Hitting, Implied Non-Con, Imprisonment, Millicent is a horse!, Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex, Sub!Hux, Vaginal Sex, You know those ginger sideburns are totally Civil War style!, cowboy smut, dom!Rose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:26:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 82,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24257374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_desk_fairy/pseuds/the_desk_fairy
Summary: He beds down by the crackling flames of his campfire, staring up through the swaying pines at a sea of winking stars —brilliant and vivid in the mountain-clear air. He asks himself, which is worse? To be a murderer or a turncoat spy? He tries to forget about the man who died before the last battles of the Civil War: General Armitage Hux of Arkansas.She scrambles through the sagebrush, lost and left to die out in that craggy canyon. Ripping off her lace gloves, she throws aside her city propriety and bends over the heap of twigs with flint and gumption. Nobody’s going to tell Rose Tico what she can and cannot do.They clash together like a storm rolling off Ward Mountain, but maybe those High Sierra mountains and the peace of wild things will tell them who they really are.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 348
Kudos: 180
Collections: GingerRoseWeek2020, Subliminal Hux Event 2021





	1. Blood on my Coat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: descriptions of animal violence, hunting and skinning. Graphic descriptions of injury.

The canyon was silent.

I rode up the draw, taking care my mare could manage her footing. The back of my neck prickled with an odd tension. 

I held my breath, listening to hooves on the sandy soil and the saddle creaking between my knees. Not a bird cried in scrubby pines, the clumps of sharp-smelling sage were still.

Too quiet.

Light fades fast on this side of the mountain; above me, the sunset burnished the saddle of the ridge in a warm, honeyed glow like gold foil. The rocky mountainside was dimming; I ought to have turned back by now. 

My chestnut mare snorted, her ears swiveling anxiously.

“Ho, Milli. I know he’s out there.”

I clicked my tongue, easing the reins and adjusting my weight in the saddle to project confidence to my horse. She let out a soft chuff in response; her gait stiffened with tension --even though she trusted me.

My eyes raked across the stacks of granite rising on either side of me, a few lines from Longfellow tumbling in my mind like a meditation.

_From the summit of the mountains:_

_Not so long and wide the world is,_

_Not so rude and rough the way is,_

_But my wrath shall overtake you,_

_And my vengeance shall attain you!_

Milli pinned her ears back, tossing her head with a squeal.

Up went my rifle onto my shoulder in a heartbeat. The butt of the weapon pressed against my buckskin jacket, inches from my pounding heart. I glared down the muzzle, my breath steaming against the rifle’s wooden base.

A sleek form glided from behind the sage and crouched on the rock face, bold as the devil himself. In the fading light, two green orbs from hell peered down at me.

The canyon rang with a cry like a woman. 

Milli whinnied and tossed her head.

“Easy, girl! Whoa!” 

The great cat bounded across the jutting cliff above me with lithe grace, powerful muscles rippling. Something primal inside my belly lurched to see him claim the ground between us. Surely our ancestors knew this same enmity for a thousand generations.

He was old. I hadn’t yet been this close to the monster, but even in the growing darkness, his fur looked patchy, his body laced with scars. The cat’s jaws hung slack, teeth gleaming.

My spine tingled with a thrill, I gazed into Satan’s eyes with every nerve in my body humming. His whiskers twitched, he hunched up against the rock face and hissed.

“You’re mine.” I squeezed the trigger.

Before my rifle spit its hot lead pill, the cat leaped from his jagged shelf. The recoil from my weapon had shifted my body just slightly so that the monster’s jaws closed around the rifle stock. Muscular front legs wrapped around my body as we tumbled to the ground.

The cat pressed me against the bottom of the ravine, but Satan was deceived: he gnawed on my weapon with a bone-crushing grip and tore backward. I choked on my gasping breath; if he found my neck it would be over. His body pinned my arm so I could not reach my knife. His claws tore at my flesh. Hot, sticky blood started to seep out onto the sand.

I shoved the rifle deeper into that demonic mouth, propping open the jaws of death just enough to push the cat’s weight off my arm. As I ripped my Bowie knife from my side, the devil swerved and batted at my head with a heavy paw. 

Claws tore my skin, white hot pain seared through me. With a jolt of now-or-never, I plunged my knife toward that bony side. The tip of my blade bounced off a rib the first time but as I rammed again and again, the metal struck liver and the beast reared back, staggering. 

Through curtains of my own blood I watched him slump weakly, I scraped myself off the sand and stuck him in the throat. He drained onto the floor of the ravine. 

I sank back onto my heels, puffing and coughing, watching the monster twitch and quiver with the aftershocks of death.

By now the canyon was soaked in dusk. In the darkness, my blood looked tacky and black on my hand. Gingerly, my fingers explored the gash that darted across my forehead and side of my face. The claw marks weren’t deep, but the steady trickle throbbed painfully. My back was worse; I could feel sand and grit stemming the flow but as I peeled off my jacket, a deep pang told me this was no small laceration. 

Dragging my calico shirt up over my shoulders, I hissed at the feeling of fabric pulling away from torn flesh. My flask flashed in the dark as I uncorked the cap and soaked my handkerchief in whiskey. I had seen the medics in the field hospital do this countless times, I braced myself for what I knew was coming.

_Jesus, God!_

My chest reverberated bitterly; I pressed the handkerchief to the white-hot jabbing sensation. I pushed harder, both to staunch the blood and to lean rebelliously against the mental intrusion of pain. After a few moments I regained control. I tied my shirt around my back and over one shoulder and slipped my arms back into my jacket. Just one more scar among a war’s worth of marks on my body.

The air felt cool on my face when I stood dizzily.

I studied my defeated opponent: a large, male mountain lion, too old to vie for the territory claimed by younger, stronger beasts but still strong enough to give me hell. His hide was marred and ugly, hardly worth the effort of tanning and smoking it. I had split the side of the cat in several hideous gashes. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to leave a half-decent skin. Working quickly I sliced the perimeter of the hide and peeled it from the cat’s body like a wet sock. I hadn’t noticed the moon had risen until a pale touch of light hit the exposed muscle tissue: luminous overlapping layers of mystery glimmering in the night. It was beautiful, really.

There lay the killer of several calves, the thief of my thin margin of income, but underneath his murderous skin he was an unfathomable universe. 

An unfamiliar feeling coiled in the bottom of my stomach: pity? Respect? I shoved it all back down, rolling up the hide and bending over to pick up my rifle.

Milli snorted when I grabbed her bridle. She stood patiently for me as I fitted my boot in the stirrup. A small grunt escaped my lips as the skin on my back burned with the motion of swinging up onto the saddle. A hot sticky drip slid down the inside of my jacket.

“Walk on, girl.” I said, mostly for my own sake. Milli had already read the pressure of my thighs and stepped quickly back down the draw, eager to leave behind the mountain lion and his tomb.

The tension in my shoulders eased —perhaps now calving season could continue uninterrupted and I could sleep easier.

The moon rose up behind me, casting pale grey light on this craggy ridge. Aspen trees whispered their lulling poetry: a thousand spade-shaped leaves flitted back and front in a soothing murmur. The white bark shone silver. 

I was easing Milli down a steep, rocky scree when I smelled the fire. A growl of irritation rumbled in my chest. Either that son of a bitch from Rancho Damerón was running his cattle down toward my meadow or those obnoxious trappers were coming through again. The Paiute were certainly more discreet about bedding down in this region of the backcountry.

I was tired as hell and in no mood to discuss grazing boundaries, so when Milli and I rounded an outcropping of trees to find a woman hunched over the fire, I just sat there dumbly, blinking at the nonsensical sight.

“Hello.” She rose. She was of Asian descent and she wore fine, expensive travel clothes despite her lack of a hat. The woman was petite with clever features and sparkling, defiant eyes. Her glossy, raven hair had clearly been in some kind of bun, but now spilled half-undone down her shoulders.

With a small gasp she hastily untucked the hem of her dirty skirt from her waist and the fabric cascaded back down over a shapely pair of legs. A sudden dryness filled my mouth.

“What in God’s name are you doing up here?” Words finally came to me.

Her features pinched into a frown.

“I could ask you the same question!” she snapped.

Stupefied, I nudged Milli forward. As the mare lumbered closer, the stranger didn’t move: she glared up at me, her jaw set.

Absurdly, a verse of Wordsworth’s flicked across my mind,

_Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;_

_Like twilight’s, too, her dusky hair_ ;

“If you are here to rob me, it has already been done,” she growled.

“I’m not here to rob you,” I answered. Instantly, I became conscious of my bloodied face and lack of a shirt. I flushed with an odd concern that I looked like a monster to her, yet the woman did not seem to flinch. 

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“My name is Rose, Rosamond Tico,” she said slowly. “My father runs the bank in San Francisco, he hired a man named Dengar to take me from Fresno to Bishop Creek.”

“Your father chose poorly, Miss Tico,” I said. “Dengar is a known crook and horse thief.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.” Her eyes lit up with anger. “He took my things and shot my footman.”

“Why didn’t you go south?” I asked, my voice tinged with suspicion. “The passage through Bear Valley Springs is much more amenable for a woman of your…” I wasn’t sure what she was. “A woman of your social standing.”

“Dengar promised to get me to Bishop Creek in two days.” 

“Then he most certainly planned on robbing you all along.”

“I need to get there as quickly as possible.” She studied me curiously. “If you take me, there will be gold in it for you.”

“I have little need of gold.”

“Then do it for chivalry.” She made a disgusted face at me.

“I have little need for that either, Miss Tico.”

“You won’t help another person lost and alone in the Sierras?” Her voice took an incredulous pitch. I could tell she wasn’t desperate, she was judging me.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you," I said, cold and measured. “It’s only that I’m driving a herd of cattle up Blayney Meadow and it’s calving season. I’m paid by the head in the fall and I won’t leave the new calves to be picked off by wolves or lions.”

Her brows drew together.

“I can take you to Bishop Creek but I won’t do it for a few weeks at least,” I said.

“My fiancé will double the compensation for your losses if you take me in the morning.” She sounded exasperated.

“As I said, Miss Tico, it’s not about the money for me.” 

“Then what is it about?!” she snarled.

I paused. I wasn’t really sure.

“I suppose I’m invested in seeing the task completed with perfection.”

She laughed bitterly.

“Of all the people that could have come through here, I am sent the stickler, fusspot cowboy?”

“I’m afraid you’ve wandered on to my particular region of the valley, Miss Tico,” I replied. “Those who frequent the backcountry know to follow the ridge and stay out of my way.”

“I think I will just camp here and continue east in the morning, sir. If you don’t mind me making camp on your land, that is,” she said, her voice edged with mockery. Miss Tico turned away from me and squatted down over her fire, stirring the crackling flames.

I set my teeth. 

_Just let her go. You do not need unnecessary complication. People are nothing but pain._

“Miss Tico, wait,” my voice came softer. “The new calves below draw all manner of predators native to these mountains. I suppose you are not prepared to defend yourself.”

“Dengar left me with nothing."

“It would be safer for you to stay in the valley with me tonight, you can return to the trail and wait for another passerby in the morning if you like.” 

She looked at me with mistrust but grunted in agreement. A chill had already descended upon the ridge that her measly little fire could do little against and it was pathetic watching her shiver. Even I took pity.

“It seems my only option is to stay with you,” she said slowly. “But if you touch me, my father and fiancé will send a posse up here to kill you.”

“I am not interested in touching you,” I said sternly. 

“Good,” she snorted, standing up. 

I dismounted more quickly than was comfortable for my beaten body; ridiculously, I found myself pretending not to be hurt. Perhaps it was a defense mechanism from this strange intrusion on my evening, but a small part of me wanted to make her feel safe. _Fool. No one is safe with you._

“May I help you onto the horse, Miss Tico?” 

“Very well.” She stepped carefully toward me. She was so small, her head barely came up to my chest and my traitorous eye traced along her lovely form. Sweat creeped down my neck at the thought of wrapping my hands around that waist.

“Hitch your hands together so I can step on,” she commanded.

“Oh,” I blinked. Of course, that made sense. I laced my fingers together and made a step, she gathered her thick skirts and slipped her boot onto my hands. I hoisted her up as she swung her leg over Milli’s back. It was quite graceful actually, for one so tiny.

Without giving myself a chance to think about it, I vaulted into the saddle in front of her. Timidly, she slipped her fingers around my waist and jerked back when she touched bare skin.

“Forgive me, Miss Tico,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. “I’ve had something of an altercation this evening.”

“You’re bleeding.” She hesitated. “Will you be alright?” The question came with a new tone of voice. It washed over me like cool water from a spring.

“I’ll do,” I answered.

I nudged Milli forward and her head swung around, giving me a scrupulous eye. She trudged forward as if to comply, yet not fully endorse the addition of another rider. Rose gripped the open sides of my jacket for some measure of support without actually touching me. I did my best to ignore her as I reined us off the ridge and into the fragrant pine forest, now bathed in silvery moonlight.

We walked in silence, the saddle creaking softly and Milli’s hooves plodding through the carpet of pine needles padding the trail. A distant howl seemed to confirm the merits of Miss Tico’s choice to join me. I felt myself blush with insipid gratification when she squeezed my jacket. Her knuckles brushed against my skin every so often, sending shivers down my spine. It was some time before I realized these small rushes had completely distracted me from feeling the claw marks in my back. 

The forest opened up into a great mountain meadow. We skirted the edge of the lush pasture along the tree line until we found them: a great herd of stocky horned beef cattle dotting the grassy slope. Their coats were glossy in the moonlight like polished river rocks; about three quarters of them were paired with skinny little miniatures on gangly legs. My heart squeezed involuntarily at the familiar sight.

“They’re beautiful,” came a voice at my shoulder.

“They truly are,” I said before I could check myself.

A low greeting came from a cow on the edge of the herd; several more echoed the first like a relay across the sea of silken brown backs. It was the loveliest sound I knew. 

As my eyes scanned their ranks I was counting, always sifting the details of their formation to gather a mental status report. A few more calves tonight; we were nearly done with calving season but the last quarter was always the most difficult. 

We walked over a bluff and came to a round pen; Milli’ ears perked happily.

“Do you have a cabin?” she asked.

“Yes.” 

“Is it close by?”

“Not immediately.” I eased back on the reins and halted Milli. I slid off her back, stifling a groan when the fabric inside my jacked pulled away from my blood-caked skin.

I looked up at Rose, my hands still on the saddle. She eyed me reproachfully but did not move.

“May I help you down, Miss Tico?”

“You may,” she said, resigned.

Timidly, my hands found her waist. She slid her leg over the saddle and dropped earthward, the momentum of her movement intentionally made my assistance unnecessary. It felt like a small rejection, although I couldn’t blame her for resisting physical contact with a blood stained, half naked stranger. 

“Where is your cabin?” She looked around, glowering.

“I sleep here during calving.”

I tied Milli to the split rail fence of the pen and removed the saddle bags. Rose stood dumbfounded, she looked around as if finally putting together the details of my rough accommodations. 

Once Milli was untacked, I turned her out into the round pen and she trotted away eagerly. Ignoring Rose, I bent over my small fire pit and quickly revived the smoldering embers. The woman sank down beside the warm flames as I strode behind a tree where a change of clothes hung to dry on a branch like a clothesline. 

Sucking in my breath, I pulled off my jacket. As I untied the shirt from my shoulders I could feel hot blood gush from the wound. The air stung, sharp and icy on my raw flesh; my shirt and handkerchief came away soaked, dripping black in the darkness.

“You’re hurt.” 

I looked up and Rose stood a few feet from me, craning her neck.

“Nothing to concern yourself with.” I shrank away, shocked by her immodesty. “”Give me a moment and I will get you something to sleep on.”

“You should have me take a look at that, I doubt you can patch up your own back.”

“No, Miss Tico, I’m quite capable,” I said, annoyed. “I’ve lived on my own for some time now.” 

I tore several long strips of dry cotton from the edge of my ruined shirt. 

I left her at the camp site and knelt down by the creek, rinsing my handkerchief in the snowmelt. I closed my eyes and steeled myself against the sting of biting water against the claw marks. The numbing temperature was soothing, water and blood trickled down my back and sides as I pressed the soaking handkerchief to Satan’s marks. Over the small sounds of the lazy creek, I heard her approach.

“That looks bad,” her voice was soft. “It’s bleeding profusely.”

“Are ladies in San Francisco accustomed to observing undressed men?” I whirled around, barking angrily.

“Forgive me for being concerned about your wellbeing!” she scoffed.

“It is not your place, Miss Tico.”

“Don’t you dare talk to me about my place!” She ignited suddenly with a burst of fury. 

Her rage surprised me. I clamped my mouth shut.

“Look at your side.” She pointed.

A trail of dark, fresh blood had painted two thick lines below my thin ribs.

“Sit down,” she ordered.

I sank slowly into a squat next to the creek and she stormed over, snatching the dripping handkerchief from my hand.

“Glad to know my last defense against the wolves comes half-eaten already,” she grumbled, pressing the damp cloth against my back. I growled, less with the sting of her firm pressure on my injury and more from shame. 

“It was a mountain lion actually,” I mumbled.

“Terrifying!” she said. “The Sierras really are merciless.”

“These mountains are my home.”

“Seems lonely.”

“Being alone is the point.” My words emerged more harshly than I meant. 

Rose was quiet for a time, gently wiping the streaks of blood from my back. Admittedly she had a good touch.

“You’re military, aren’t you?” she asked.

I stiffened.

“How did you know that?”

“All the backcountry men in Fresno had whiskers; you’re clean shaven.” Her tone dropped. “Blue or gray?”

“Does it matter?” My voice chilled. “The Union won, the Confederacy lost.”

“They’re saying more than eight hundred thousand people died,” she said. “Might make a man a bit bitter.”

“I made my choices, Miss Tico,” I answered frostily. “I’ve had to live with the consequences.”

She made a sound like she was biting her tongue, and I was grateful. There was nothing I wanted to talk about less than the war.

“Did you get him?” she asked finally.

“What?”

“The mountain lion?”

“Oh.” An odd feeling of pride bubbled up in my chest. “Yes, he won’t be troubling anyone.”

“I’m impressed these are your only injuries.” Rose held the handkerchief against my shoulder with one hand and bent over me, examining my face.

“It was a mistake,” I said curtly. “I should have fired more quickly.”

“You’re lucky.” She grasped my chin and tipped my head up, taking closer look at the scratches on my forehead and eyebrow. 

It was the closest I had been to a woman in a long time. Her features were smudged with dirt and ash, but they held a self-possessed beauty. Brows drawn and lips parted, she looked at me not as a friend or lover would. More like an engineer inspecting the parts of a train, but still my pulse raced. Her thumb brushed against the smarting scabs forming above my eye, my eyelashes grazed the side of her hand. I hadn't had any kind of human contact for years and the touch of undesigning kindness for, perhaps, decades. Without warning, a sigh escaped my lips and she recoiled, horror darting across her face.

“Apologies,” I choked.

“Take care not to touch the scratches,” she said, decidedly brushing off my unhinged moment.

Rose stepped behind me and packed the wound on my back with bits of the shirt. She bound the strips around my chest and tied them securely.

“Don’t forget to change that often after I’m gone tomorrow,” she instructed.

After that strange intimacy, we ignored one another while I prepared the camp for bedding down. I had with me a bear skin and some wool blankets. Surely a poor bed for a banker’s daughter.

“This is kind, thank you.” She settled onto the bearskin by the fire.

I grunted and slid into my bedroll. 

The sky was clear, the whorls of galaxies stood in brilliant dimension like a river of light. Mindlessly, I found all my spring companions: Ursa Major, Cancer, Hydra, Virgo. My eyes were following Leo when she interrupted my thoughts.

“You never told me your name.”

“Hux,” I replied. “You can call me Hux.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first poem is from Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, written in 1855.
> 
> The second is The Perfect Woman by William Wordsworth published in 1807.


	2. Rose Pulls a Calf

#2 Rose Pulls a Calf

_ ARM'D year! year of the struggle!  _

_ No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year!  _

_ Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano;  _

_ But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a rifle on your shoulder,  _

_ With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands— with a knife in the belt at your side,  _

_ As I heard you shouting loud—your sonorous voice ringing across the continent. _

—Walt Whitman, Drum Taps (1865)

“Are you the sonofabitch that shot your father?” 

The inane, off-key plinking of the saloon’s piano perfectly matched the man’s slack, insipid face. He tossed back his whiskey and leaned closer to me, his elbow braced on the counter of the bar.

“I asked you a question, colonel” The man whuffed from under his thick, handle-bar mustache.

I studied the man’s glazed eyes. Finding nothing there, I glanced at his uniform. He wore the emblem of a Mississippi regiment, which seemed reasonable given the fact that Beauregard’s men were camped next to the 1st Arkansas Infantry Regiment near Shiloh. 

What didn’t make sense was why this arsehole was speaking to me.

“I am.” I said simply.

A flicker of shock registered over the man’s face.

“But it’s not colonel, sir.” My lips curled into a sneer. With one quick motion my knuckles made contact with the juicy meat of his cheek. The man sprawled backward, the stool behind him scraping the floor with a screech.

“It’s general.” I said, straightening my grey coat. “General Hux.”

My eyes flew open with the sound of telltale lowing. 

The air was sharp as a sheet of ice on my bare face, but not the kind of cold that’s damp —no, Sierra cold nips at your skin but leaves your bones alone so long as you have a proper bedroll. It’s a dry cold.

I sat up and looked at the other side of the fire. 

She was still there, curled up in my bearskin with her hair spilling every which way like a shiny black waterfall. I imagined how that smooth texture might feel under my fingers.

A long moo broke my spellbound staring and I slid out of my bedroll, cheeks blooming with shame.

The creek gurgled happily and obliged me a shock to the face as I splashed my hot cheeks with cold water. I shook my head, flinging sparkling droplets like the dog I was. Planting my hat squarely back on my head, I wandered out onto the field, chewing a piece of cured meat.

Dawn was near, the valley resonated with that blue light-before-the-light. The hammer rapping of a woodpecker echoed from a nearby pine. My eye caught his handsome red crest and spotted waistcoat as he flapped to another pine, tapping the bark. A flock of starlings took up a chatty chorus from a live oak across the pasture..

I found the noisy heifer almost instantly. She stood off away from the herd, grazing but stopped every so often to paw the ground. I studied the angle of her back as she strained, the contour of her neck, the effort of her bellow. I got as close as I dared without disturbing her and studied the region below her tail. No tiny hooves.

The heifer’s head bobbed toward me when the contraction was over; her ears perked, nostrils puffing plumes of steam in the frigid air. She dropped her muzzle back down and ripped up chunks of grass with her thick tongue. ‘Lengua’ they call it at Rancho Damerón. 

I watched the heifer carefully, plucking up a blade of grass and sticking the sugary side in my mouth. 

“What’s going on, everything alright?”

I spun around.

“Sshhh!” 

Rose was standing behind me; she had wiped the smudges from her face and caught up her raven hair into a practical braid. A few loose waves of glossy black splashed becomingly about her cheekbones. Her eyes were bright and eager.

I touched my finger to my lips and walked away from the heifer toward a clump of trees.

“What’s wrong with that cow?”

“It’s a heifer,” I said crisply.

“The difference being...?” 

“A cow has had a calf, a heifer has not.” I leaned up against the trunk of a ponderosa pine. “That’s about to change if all goes well.” I nodded toward the straining creature.

“Oh!” Rose said, understanding.

“From what I can see it’s not going well.” I frowned.

“What are you looking for? How do you know it’s going well?”

“Jesus, you are a city girl,” I sniffed. “You know it’s gone well when you have a calf on the ground and the cow didn’t bother you with the details.”

“Sounds suspiciously convenient for you.” Rose wrinkled her nose.

“It’s better that way,” I corrected. “Cows that calve without help are better mothers. The calves tend to be healthier.”

“So what if they can’t deliver without help?” Rose cast an unappealing glance at the heifer. “You actually help them? Like a midwife?”

I sighed. The laboring beast was visibly straining, struggling to no avail.

“You can watch if you want.”

I rolled up the sleeves of my flannel shirt. Moving slowly, I eased my way toward the heifer, cautious not to startle her. I placed a comforting hand on her rump.

“Sorry, girl,” I murmured. 

I waited for the contraction to subside and then plunged my hand into the dark, warm fabric between being and not being. I was up to my elbow before I hit something.

“Blame it.” 

“What?” Rose was at my shoulder. “Is something wrong? Is there a head?”

“Yes, there’s a head and that’s the problem.” I growled, feeling a soft little calf nose.

“Don’t babies come out head first?”

“No. Livestock come out feet first. Their two front feet to be exact, and I cannot find them.”

Wincing, I pressed gently on the calf’s head to back it out of the birth canal. My fingers reached deeper, hoping to hook on to a tiny hoof. I slid my arm back out, steam drifted off my wet, blood spattered skin.

I waited for Rose to be disgusted by the fluids or the metallic, earthy smell of birth. No remarks came. 

The heifer gave a mournful bawl and bobbed her horned head painfully. 

“Easy, that’s a girl,” I said quietly, mostly from habit.

“You feel sorry for a cow.” 

“Heifer.”

“I’m surprised, Hux.” Rose eyed me curiously. “Maybe you’re not such a cold fusspot after all.”

I shot her a dark look but said nothing, I reached back inside and looked for those two little handles with which I could pull the calf free. My finger hit something. It was harder than a nose but my shoulder was too wide to get in deeper.

“Let me try,” Rose offered.

“Miss Tico, no.” I scoffed. “You really mustn’t trouble yourself.”

“My arms are smaller, I could get a better grip on it.”

She wasn’t wrong, and she was already rolling up her sleeves.

“Well, go on then.” I stepped back.

Without hesitation, Rose slid her arm into the heifer.

“Merciful God, it’s as warm as a Christmas pie in there!” She let out a yelp of surprise. Her eyes lit up with amazement. “Oh, I’ve found something!”

“Good! Now make sure there’s two somethings, and make certain they’re both feet and not a nose!”

“Alright!” She searched around for a moment. “It’s two! Two hard hoofs!”

“Yes! That’s it!” I said excitedly. “Now pull with all your might!”

Rose grunted and threw her weight away from the heifer. “Oh they’re stuck!”

“Just keep pulling, pull when you feel the heifer push, work together!”

The creature mooed pathetically.

“Come on, girl!” Rose cried. Her face pinched up in feisty determination.

“You’re doing brilliantly!” I said, mostly to the heifer. I watched her arm slide a good deal out of the animal.

I reached toward her. “I can do the rest.” 

Rose nodded, puffing. She released the hooves and stepped back.

I caught hold of the forelegs, waited for the heifer to push and pulled out a sticky, wet pair of legs into the sunlight.

“My God, it’s working!” Rose exclaimed. “It’s a real little calf!”

I nodded, panting. This calf was really stuck. Gripping the feet with two hands, I braced my boot on the heifer’s rump and hauled a damp, still being out into the world. I let the newcomer slide onto the grass, the white membrane around its body tearing away.

“No!” Rose cried. “The poor little thing is dead!”

I knelt down and tore a bit of sac away from the calf’s nose and mouth. The tiny creature started to stir.

“Is it breathing?” Her voice was panicky.

Working quickly, I picked up the calf’s back feet and hung it upside down, rubbing the wet barrel of its chest in firm vigorous strokes. The calf opened its mouth but wouldn’t cough or sneeze. I picked up its face and closed my mouth over the nostrils, sucking in with great force. 

The calf sneezed several times and let out a watery little cry.

“You made it!” Rose laughed tearfully. “Oh, you little darling!”

The calf blinked her big, doe-like eyes and moved jerkily; already her legs were preparing for her first standing attempt.

Rose looked at me, her face beaming. A touch of dampness glistened in her eye. Involuntarily, I felt the corners of my eyes prick too. There, at the dawn of all things, life seemed so pure. 

“Let’s move back and let the cow bond with her calf.”

“Right —cow!” Rose smiled knowingly.

We retreated to the pines and watched the new mother smell and clean her offspring. In minutes the calf was standing to find its first milk.

“So this is your job, you watch cows all day?” Rose teased.

“I have an investment in observing this initial demonstration of maternal competence.” I said importantly. “Not all the calves I pull bond with their mothers. Especially not first-timers.”

“Mercy.” She frowned. “What if she won’t take her calf?”

“Sometimes I can bond it with another cow that has just calved —the mother might think she had twins.” I gave Rose a malicious smile. “Or if another cow has just had a dead calf I can cut off the skin and tie it onto the abandoned calf like a little coat!”

“You wouldn’t!” Rose gave me a horrified glare.

“It works!” I smirked.

“You wicked man!” Her mouth dropped open. 

“It would be worse to let the abandoned calf die.” I shrugged. “And wasteful of the dead calf.”

Rose chuckled and leaned back against the ponderosa pine. She gave me a discerning look. “I get the feeling you’ve had to choose between a lot of bad in your life, Hux.”

“Isn’t that all of life?” I said, deflecting. “Choosing between bad and worse?”

“I suppose.” 

I was content to sit and watch the cow/calf pair, but she took a breath like she was preparing to unload a great weight from her mind. 

“I’m going to get headed back up to the trail,” she said, standing up.

“Oh.” My voice betrayed a note of disappointment. 

She brushed the pine needles off her maroon linen skirt and paused, studying my face.

“Thank you for letting me witness that this morning.” Her head tipped toward the new calf. “That was really something; I’ll think about it always.”

She started to leave.

“Miss Tico!” I jumped up to my feet. My mind raced but I didn’t know what I wanted to say.

For a brief moment, Rose wore an open expression, like a ray of sunlight. 

“Please take this.” I pulled out my cured beef wrapped in wax cloth and handed it to her.

“Oh, thank you.” Rose’s brow furrowed, but she gave me a grateful smile. Her hand brushed mine as she took the food. Tension hovered over us like the moment before lightning strikes the ridge.

“Come back down if you don’t meet anyone headed for Bishop Creek?” I asked hopefully.

“I will.” She slipped her arms back into her dark red wool coat.

Rose walked with big steps through the tall grass, holding the hem of her skirt. As she disappeared toward the tree line, I discovered my mind was working on how to contrive a way to bring her back, or follow her. But I didn’t know why.

The first Arkansas Secession Convention in 1861 had voted to stay in the Union.

I hadn’t been a delegate, but I was there in Little Rock that April. My training program for the Arkansas State Militia had gotten me some attention.

In truth, I had become a soldier because stabbing my bayonet into a dummy stuffed with straw was the only socially acceptable alternative to running my father through.

As I perfected each sequence of military life and rose through the ranks, I felt myself gaining on his power. I was sick, obsessed with clawing my way up to his level of influence. “Who’s the bastard now?” I would laugh haughtily to myself as my soldiers razed a Quapaw village.

Certainly a captain was more important than a plantation owner. Or a major, lieutenant colonel, colonel, brigadier general or a major general. But each time I climbed on to that next step and looked out over the vista of greatness, I found I was still the little red-headed boy, slapped in the face by a giant, looming monstrosity. Brendol Hux would never shrink, no matter how big I got.

So when Arkansas governor, Henry Rector, refused to furnish soldiers to President Abraham Lincoln, the Confederate Secretary of War, L. P. Walker wrote to him and asked us to send our Arkansas boys to Lynchburg.

I was full of piss and vinegar when we rode out from Little Rock to Virginia. Our regimentheld the finest men in all of Arkansas, including the grandson of Davey Crockett and the grandnephew of President Andrew Jackson. We were in high spirits as we headed for the Mason Dixon line and took our station near Aquia Creek.

It was a heady bliss, the attention and camaraderie of the senior officers in those days. My chest glowed when General Robert E. Lee remarked upon the discipline and order of my men. By July, we had already secured our first victory at Manassas, the First Battle of Bull Run. The Arkansas boys didn’t even get sent to the front. While my soldiers waited in reserve, I was at Lee’s elbow: observing, noting, saturating myself in his ruthless calm.

That next April, 1862 we had planned the biggest offensive of the war to date. The Union Army of the Tennessee commanded by General Ulysses S. Grant camped vulnerably at Pittsburg Landing. The Yanks were sitting ducks.

The morning of April 6th opened with a clear brilliance that gave us every hope for a fine day. We mustered on the green, a sea of Dixie Greys stretched out over the field in tight, orderly ranks. Field canons and cavalry arrayed before the senior officers in a grand military display.

I was soaring, my hubris like a gusts in my sails. I floated across the infantry line with the gentle rock of my dapple grey’s canter. Faces flew by, the soldiers’ features stern and at attention. I remember how young they were, their wide, trusting eyes so unprepared for the carnage the next three and a half years would see them through. Those that lived, anyway.

My eye caught a small disturbance in my crisp, neat formation. I wheeled my dapple grey about and trotted toward the back of the reserves. 

“You there!” I halted beside two young enlisted men. “Privates Morgan and Johansen.”

The youths tightened up their stance, eyes fixed dead ahead.

“Explain your lack of decorum, sirs.”

The taller lad had flaxen hair and large, hazel eyes which blinked rapidly. Lord knows how I allowed such soft-faced babes to be ripped from their mother’s breasts and slapped with flintlock muskets. The shorter private was seventeen or less, if I was any judge. Private Morgan’s lips moved before a sound emerged from his throat.

“Them’s violet’s, sir,” Morgan gulped. Both his and Johansen’s caps were tucked with stray wildflowers: small purple blossoms bobbing in the slight breeze.

My mouth twitched. I was in far too high of spirits to truly scold the boys, but I couldn’t exchange morale for protocol either.

“And are violets a part of the uniform issued to enlisted men of the Army of Mississippi?”

“No, sir, begging your pardon.”

“It’s my fault, General, sir,” Johansen interjected. “I done said to Morgan that perhaps the Yanks won’t shoot at us if we wear these here flowers, seeing as they’s a sign of peace.”

This answer surprised me. My stern remark died on my tongue and I looked up over the green. The grassy meadow had only just shaken off winter’s shroud, patches of frost still clung to the ground in places. Violets were everywhere; their little purple eyes winking, full of promise.

“Maintain your uniform in keeping with regulations, sirs,” I ordered.

“Yessir,” the privates groveled.

I reined my dapple grey back toward the head of the formation, catching every hushed cuss between Morgan and Johansen as they doubtlessly clawed the violets from their caps with deserved embarrassment. Had I been less confident that we would surprise Grant at Pittsburg Landing, I might not have smirked, but just then I was feeling all the heady vanity of spring. 

I rode to the front of the formation and wheeled around my dapple grey, looking out over the sea of eager faces. General Beauregard gave me a tight nod and I stepped onto the rostrum.

“Today is the end of the Republic.” I proclaimed, my voice echoing over the rows of grey caps. “The end of a regime that imposes disorder.”

I clutched my reins, lit from within by the electric energy of the crowd.

“At this very moment in a city far from here, the Federals lie to the states whilesupporting economically treacherous abolitionism and the loathsome destruction of our state’s rights.”

The soldiers’ eyes gleamed with righteous anger.

“This fierce army which you have built, together in which we stand, will bring an end to this oppression! To their cherished congress!”

My voice began to rise with gritty bravado, I was slightly light-headed —drunk with fervor.

“All remaining citizens will bow to the Confederate States of America and remember this as the last day of the Republic!”

The ranks responded with a visceral war cry,they formed into their attack columns ringing with blood lust.

Half of my boys would die at Shiloh that day.

Sometimes thunder makes my stomach drop into my boots.

Every muscle in my body tenses, waiting for a cannon ball to slam into my ranks and fling bits of my men into the air.

The cow/calf pair had long wandered off to join the herd that afternoon when a damp wind swept up through the valley. Aspen trees sang with this change of breath rushing through their leaves. The starlings flew across the pasture into the shelter of the pines, fleeing a mounting tension in the air.

I stood, peering up at a heavy, grey curtain rolling over the peak of Ward Mountain.

Thunder boomed across the canyon.

This time my heart lurched with a different thought.

Rose was up on the ridge, and from where I was standing it looked like one hell of a storm was coming through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, this is such a fun story to write. What did you think of Hux's speech?? Did it work? 
> 
> Were you grossed out by the cow birth?


	3. A Storm Rolls off Ward Mountain

I set out a fast clip across Blayney Meadow. Milli snorted and swished her tail, reading my anxious energy. We slowed to a pensive trot once we broke above the tree line and started tracing the rocky switchbacks up in the foothills of Ward Mountain. That was about when the rain hit.

In Arkansas, the rain dumps like a warm, wet bucket for twenty minutes followed by clear, sunny skies.

In the High Sierras, rain, wind and lightning buffet the bald rock face like angry titans attacking Mount Olympus.

Within minutes I was soaked.

_ Capital work, moron. She’s likely found gold panners who will take her back to Bishop Creek and you’re riding up the ridge for nothing.  _

I chastised myself for this thought: why the hell hadn’t I just gone with her this morning?

Water pelted my face. I tipped my head and a small stream dribbled off the brim of my hat. The calico of my shirt clung to my wiry frame, cloying and damp against my sweaty skin. Milli seemed impervious to the wet. The thunder, however, had her spooked.

A low rumble shook the mountainside and Milli tossed her head, jerking the tightly collected reins from my fingers.

“Slow, girl.” My voice murmured with long vowels. “Easy.”

We trotted up the trail where I had found the raven-haired wanderer last night but no one was there. Firs and cedars lining the trail bent their plumed branches downward in defeat, dripping sorrowfully.

“Hello!” I shouted over the wind.

I dismounted, not knowing what else to do.

I put my hands around my mouth. “Miss Tico!” 

It was possible she had continued down the trail since the morning and made it halfway to Paiute Pass by now. She could be anywhere in these damn blasted mountains.

A clatter from the angry gods above sent Milli into hysterics. She reared up and took off down the trail, kicking and bucking.

“Hey, whoa!” I ran after her. “Milli, whoa girl!”

My black military boots squished and slipped as I jogged down the sodden path. True misery.

I cursed the weather and my demon-possessed horse when, rounding the bend, I nearly ran smack into her chestnut haunches. Milli stood half in the trail, head-first in a patch of tender creekbed grass. She lifted her head as I approached, nickering. I swore under my breath and yanked the reins back over her ears when I caught a flash of maroon.

My heart stopped.

Beside the creek, a small form draped limply over a rock. 

The sensation that happened in my chest at that moment was like holding the contents of a cracked egg in your fingers. I felt myself spilling out of the seams as I flew to her, turning over her soaking body and beholding blood and bruises. 

“Rose, can you hear me?” I held her face, smoothing back her damp hair.

She was breathing at least. Her chest rose and fell slowly in contrast to my ragged breath. I scanned her body with the practiced touch of someone who survived twenty one battles in four years. It was only when my fingers were on the pulse of her gracefully curved neck that I suddenly felt a small twinge of impropriety. I brushed my feelings aside.

“Christ, this is my fault.” 

Her limbs were so cold. I gathered her up in my arms and stood, breathing in silent remark that she was surprisingly heavy for such a small person. Carefully, tenderly, I climbed into the saddle and settled her against me. When I looked down at her, water dripped from the brim of my hat onto her unflinching face. Without thinking, I brushed it away with my thumb. Her skin shone like the luminous surface of the thick-petaled golden flowers that grew on the lake. 

Immediately, I was seized with guilt for touching her face. I had no idea the violation she might have already experienced today because of my damn neglect. The very thought of it crushed me.

“Walk on, Milli.” I squeezed my legs and wheeled my mare’s head around, pointing back up the trail. I needed only one hand for the reins but it was difficult cradling her limp weight against my chest. Finally I gave up and looped the reins around the saddle horn, holding Rose with better gentleness for using both arms. Milli seemed to perk up; horses are always eager to return home.

The thunder had subsided for the time being but the veil of rainfall still covered the valley when we returned to Blayney Meadow. All the familiar architecture of the wooded pasture looked changed through the sheets of water: spiny gorse bushes clung to the droplets like sparkling jewels and the sage looked painted blue. Dark trees swayed in the wind, swishing their lowered, waterlogged branches. 

I could feel Rose stir against me slightly but when I glanced down her eyes were still closed.

Some time later, I reined up at my cabin. It was a small, unassuming structure tucked discreetly behind a curtain of trees hemming in the building on three sides. The south-facing wall looked out over the South Fork of the San Joaquin River. The cabin was newly built, just finished last fall, and it still smelled like cedar shavings and smoke when I pushed through the door. Grey light poured into the one room as I carried Rose inside. 

The bed, in the corner next to the door, was a rough-hewn frame tied with ropes suspending a pile of furs: a rather lavish catalog of the foes I had vanquished in defense of my cattle. Laying Rose down, I stood over her, my hands shaking. I swallowed hard, dreading the inevitable task. The wool of her frock coat was completely saturated, her clothes soaked and muddied —I knew it could be deadly to leave her like that.

“Rose?” I knelt down next to the bed. “Are you awake?”

She did not respond.

I let loose a mouthful of silent oaths as I slipped her arms out of her coat and threw it on the ground. Avoiding the next level of indecency for as long as possible, I unlaced and removed her muddy leather boots.

I stood there, fists balled, my breath hissing through my teeth.

Without looking, I pulled off her stockings. Moving as quick as I could, I searched for a way to get her petticoat off.

Confounded women’s clothes! 

Just as I was beginning to suspect females used witchcraft to secure their garments, I found the buttons of her petticoat and yanked it down her legs. The wet linen stuffed with layers of crinoline pooled, soggy at my feet.

“Holy God.” 

Her thin cotton shift and lace-trimmed drawers clinged translucently to the loveliest set of thighs I had laid eyes on: twin rounded slopes of meadow hills in winter.

_ Mind your wits, you monster. _

I didn’t want to proceed. I couldn’t. But the thick fabric of her light blue Garibaldi shirt was dripping visibly. I didn’t have a choice. Blame it to goddamn Jesse.

My breathing slowed, throat thick. Trembling, my fingers moved in slow motion to the buttons, starting at her waist. If she woke up now, I would have most certainly dropped dead. Sweat formed on my forehead and sneaked down my back, the uncontrollable arousal made my cheeks bloom with shame.

Untying the collar of her blouse revealed angry purple bruises on her neck that drew out an involuntary, sad sound from my throat. My selfish feelings chilled for the moment, I unbuttoned the wrists of her shirt and slipped it off her. Her arms, too, depicted the marks of vicious grabbing: the ruthless taking of men. I hated them, certainly enough to kill them.

I reflected that her corset should probably come off as well, but this was too much for me. Considering also that she would wake up in a strange place without most of her clothes, I thought it best to leave one major piece of armor for dignity’s sake.

Also I had completely lost my nerve.

Eager to cover her, I sifted through the stack of furs beside her on the bed and shook out my favorite: the queen.

It was an enormous hide of glossy, thick fur: silver and white, almost as tall as me when I held it out. The she-wolf who had worn it had been the regal empress of the upper Blayney Meadow and a constant tormenter my first three years in the Sierras. She was cleverer than any snare and good as any field captain in the tactical management of her shadowy wolf soldiers. No one took more calves from me than her.

It was last spring when I found her on Mount Senger. I paid a young Paiute man to help me track her, we trekked for miles above the treeline to a craggy den. I will never forget the look in her eye before I pulled the trigger.

_ You have broken the rules. _ Her face said, as clearly as if she had spoken it. I knew it was wrong, perhaps evil. She didn’t bat an eye as the hammer slammed down on the flint, she just lay there nursing her pups.

The young tracker took her tail. I went home with her skin and overwhelming regret. Sometimes I lay wrapped up in the cloak of her being and told her I was sorry. Other times I asked for her help. Her strength seemed to ward off my nightmares about the war.

Now I needed the queen to keep Rose warm and undercover, staving off the threat of fever or pneumonia. I tucked the skin around her shivering body; a spray of white fir tickled her chin and her brows creased. I froze, watching to see if Rose would wake up, but her face relaxed.

I stood, shooting one more glance at the sleeping form on the bed before peeling off my dripping jacket and hanging it up on a peg by the door. I had a change of shirt up here but my other trousers were down at calf camp. Sighing resignedly, I started as big a fire I could get and sat with a squelch in my wet pants. No sense in Miss Tico waking up half naked to a half naked man.

  
  


Rose’s eyes flew open. Everything hurt.

_ Well, not everything _ … She let out a grateful exhale. That had been too close, she thought ruefully that her chances of survival were much worse on the wild side of the Sierras. Still better than the boring, stuffy side.

Her eyes darted around the strange room. Opposite from the bed she lay in, a river-rock hearth blazed with cozy fire. The cabin was sparse and militantly organized with a small wooden chair placed before the fireplace, a table with a crate of dry goods underneath and a shelf with a few small bowls and tin cups. Beside her sat a trunk propped up against the wall, upon which lay a stack of books, an oil lamp and a fine silver razor engraved  _ A. F. Hux _ . 

Rose reached out hypnotically, tracing her fingers along the spines of the books.

_ Ralph Waldo Emerson _

_ Walt Whitman _

_ Henry David Thoreau _

_ Thomas Hardy _

_ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow _

Instantly she knew who’s cabin this must be. Amusement played on the corner of her lips, he had certainly amassed the writings of the most popular literary hermits of the late 1860s.

Grey wool caught the corner of her eye.

_ Of course. _ She thought, looking over at pegs by the door. A thick whip, several ropes and a shirt hung there, but on the end was a heavy grey wool infantry coat with brass buttons. Any emblem, rank or regimental markings had been stripped off: this garment had been purely functional for some time.

It had been easy to guess he was a rebel from the soft edges of his consonants and lingering vowels, sweet as Kentucky bourbon. The educated affectation of his speech had left her wondering; her mind hummed with curiosity and a sudden itch to hear him say ‘whoa, girl.’

At that moment, the door creaked open and she plunged her almost bare shoulders back under the cover of that delightfully silky fur. She peered over the edge at a broad-shouldered shape that closed the door. A hatted head tipped up and she was met with brilliant green eyes.

“You’re awake, Miss Tico,” Hux said. Rose’s skin prickled.  _ Not Kentucky bourbon: honey whiskey. _

He was holding a bundle of herbs and flowers: sprigs of yellow blossoms, dark thick leaves, and blue round flowers gone to seed. He dropped them on the table.

“Thank you,” Rose began, her voice catching unexpectedly. “For picking me up on the trail.”

He paused, looking down at her with a face she couldn’t decode.

“Are you hurt?” The words sounded strangled.

“A little bruised. I got kicked in the ribs and knocked in the head,” she said.

“Who did this?” His coldness suddenly ignited into a wrath that made her stomach bob with real fear.

“I don’t know,” she stuttered. “I was on the trail when a mule train with fur trappers came through. When I asked them to take me to Bishop Creek they…” Rose swallowed. “They demanded payment up front,” she whispered.

Hux sank into the chair weakly and stared at his boots. He looked up at her and pressed his lips together.

“I should have come with you,” he said, his shoulders drooping. Those green eyes were shining at her, she was surprised to detect so much sadness in this aloof stranger.

“I’m alright,” Rose said. “I’m safe.”

Sucking in a breath through his teeth, Hux stood and separated out the herbs by kind.

“Here.” He handed her a dark leaf. “You can chew on this for a headache. It’s mondarella.”

Rose popped the tangy, spicy herb in her mouth. She caught a flash of pain on his face as he turned away. Hux hung a black, cast iron tea kettle over the fire and stirred the flames.

“The pennyroyal —the blue flowers on the table…” He coughed and hunched his shoulders. “The seeds make sure there’s bleeding.” 

Rose felt a pang of shock in her chest.

“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Listen.” Hux stood. “I won’t tell anyone.” He turned and met her gaze, his liquid voice washing over her frayed nerves. “And I won’t treat you any differently for what’s happened to you. This doesn’t have to hurt you any more than it already has.”

“But they didn’t touch me.” Rose shook her head. “I played dead.”

“You what?”

“They were handling me roughly and I just… dropped like a fainting spell,” Rose recounted. “When I went limp they kicked me some, but I don’t remember after that. I feel fine, other than my head and ribs.”

“You know, a possum’s strategy doesn’t always work out for him.” The corner of Hux’s mouth twitched.

“It was a foolish plan to be sure,” Rose shrugged. “Shouldn’t have worked, I suppose.”

“Then you are a lucky possum.” His eyebrow flicked up, his sharp, angular features almost curved into a smile.

“Only half lucky.” Rose pointed to the swelling, bloody gash on her cheek.

“Hmm that, yes.” He tucked a few of the yellow flowers with their leaves and stems into his mouth and chewed for a moment before spitting into a tin cup. 

“What is that?” Rose lurched her head back with a disgusted face as he squatted down next to the bed.

“Arnica.” He blinked at her quizzically. “Don’t you use this in San Francisco?” 

“I don’t typically get beaten and bruised in San Francisco, no,” she scoffed. “And I don’t often find myself coming into contact with other people’s spittle!”

He quirked his head, she could see his long eyelashes were ginger at the tips and faded almost into white at the roots. “Perhaps you’d ought to prepare it yourself, then,” he said, looking reproachfully into the cup.

“I suppose I’ll do,” Rose grumbled. “You can put it on my face if you expect it will help.”

Moving with a persuading slowness, Hux lifted a handkerchief that had been soaked in hot water. His motions were the opposite of the predatory men who had assaulted her that morning. Where they had been quick and controlling, Hux’s movements were paced as a question with each inch of distance he put between himself and her. She had watched him move like that with the heifer: so patient. It could only be a practiced grace belonging to somebody who had given up on getting their own way all the time.

Rose stared up at the ceiling as he gently wiped away the blood on her cheek. 

“Looks like we’re a matched set.” 

“Pardon me?” she said, sounding shocked.

He turned his face and tapped the jagged claw marks with a small glint of humor.

“Ah,” Rose chuckled nervously. “It’s a wild place out here.”

He scooped up some of the chewed arnica onto the tips of his fingers and dabbed it delicately over the pink edges of broken flesh on her cheekbone.

She inhaled when he swept aside a stray hair. His hand radiated with heat against her cheek, one of his fingers that was not occupied brushed with feather-light contact against her sensitive face. She resisted the urge to close her eyes.

“Where did you learn about herbs?” Rose asked neutrally.

“The Paiute, mostly.”

“Do you get along well with them?”

“Better than most anybody here.”

He had covered the bruised and cut area on her face with his sticky poltuce thick enough that she could feel it against her eyelash when she blinked. Rose wasn’t sure why he was still patting it in place.

“My father said the ranchers in Owen’s Valley have a tenuous relationship with the Paiute.”

“That’s because their cattle herds are not managed properly,” Hux said, a note of irritation creeping into his voice. “If they kept their cows closer together and moved more frequently, they wouldn’t drive away the other creatures the Paiute depend on. The cows ruin their irrigation ditches and destroy the native plants.”

“Father said they killed settlers from Bishop Creek and Aurora.”

“It wasn’t like how it sounds,” he said briskly. “A militia from Bishop Creek pursued a hunting party and things got out of hand.”

“Is it safe? Bishop Creek?” Rose asked.

“Nothing is safe, Miss Tico.” Hux’s hand dropped to his lap. “No where, and no one for that matter.”

He stood and wiped his hands on his thick canvas trousers. Taking the cast iron tea kettle, he poured a measure into another tin cup and took something down from the shelf, adding it to the water.

“Are you safe, Hux?” 

His head snapped toward her. She was sitting up on the bed, the wolf skin curled open slightly revealing a smooth shoulder illuminated by the grey light from the window. 

His lips parted, he moved toward the bed steadily and sank down, just below eye level with her.

“No, Miss Tico.” He handed her a cup steaming with the rich aroma of mint leaves. Her hands closed around the hot cup, surprised by how quickly his fingers moved out of the way. Rose looked up and Hux’s eyes were on the floor, his long eyelashes fanned against his cheekbones. A draft from the window made her suddenly conscious that her décolletage and shoulders were exposed when she reached for the tea. A dart of heat shot through her body.

“You’re not safe with me.” Still looking at the floor, Hux stood and reached for his jacket.

“There’s a dry cured ham in the crate over there.” His hatted head jerked toward the table in the corner. “I’m going back to calf camp. You ought to rest.”

Rose nodded.

“Use this if you need me.” He fished in his jacket pocket for a moment and pulled a small military whistle, setting it on the trunk next to her. “I’ll be back at daybreak to take you to the trail.” He turned to go.

“Hux?”

He stopped, for a split second a new look darted across his face. If he had been inches away like when he was patching her cheek, she didn’t know what she would have done. His ginger eyebrows lifted, waiting for the question that had fled from her mind.

“Thank you,” she exhaled.

A muscle in his jaw flexed but he said nothing. Hux tipped his hat and stepped outside into the rain. The door closed and she could hear his heavy boots descend the deck and crunch across the path. A snort from Milli and hoofbeats signaled his departure. 

Rose sipped her tea, looking down into the swirling bits of dried mint leaves. Why was her heart flipping like the aspen leaves outside the window? She stared out at the rain-swept world, soaked in deep jewel tones. The river slipped by quietly.

“You’re engaged,” she growled to herself. “You’re already with the most powerful, interesting and handsome man in California —the man who will let you be what you want to be!”

She picked up the whistle and closed her mouth around its cold surface without blowing. His lips had been there.

A rush of heat flooded her veins, she closed her eyes and smelled leather, horse and sweet honey whiskey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guyyyyys I cried about the wolf part.... is that normal???
> 
> Yeaaah, putting spit on an open wound is bad but for rlz arnica and monderella are supposed to have the described effects, I have not tried them though. (Actual herbalists are welcome to weigh in!!) Pennyroyal is supposed to help women “get their cycle back” as it was casually described in that era, but in 1830 the US government outlawed the sale of pennyroyal or distribution of that information.
> 
> The Battle of Bishop Creek happened in 1851 between the Northern Paiute and ranchers/militia out of Bishop Creek and Aurora -so it went down before Hux got to the Sierras, but small skirmishes continued until 1868. I decided that Hux would probably side with the Paiute, even though he's running cattle too, because the overgrazing and general annoyingness of the ranchers in Owen's Valley would have bothered him.
> 
> SO! For science, I have a question: the second half of this chapter was in 3rd person -the first time I've dipped into that style in this story. Which is more effective to you? I'm writing this story to sharpen my first person skillz but I was too tempted to switch back (for Hux thirst reasons, obvi!) What is your opinion?


	4. I Cook A Liver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: graphic description of harvesting meat.  
> 

_ “Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.”  _

— John Muir, “My First Summer in the Sierras” published in 1911.

I woke up to the sound of a quarrelsome Douglas Squirrel. 

His tattoo of chirping was almost steady enough to ignore in the deepest reaches of sleep, but now as I climbed out of my dreams the high pitched barks rudely broke through my consciousness.

“Piss off!” I snarled, opening my eyes.

The indignant little rodent frisked off higher up the tree trunk. His thick grey tail coiled and twitched.

While the squirrel was cursing me and my kin for a thousand generations, I thought struck me. How strange was it, that this creature who ate gummy pinecones and skittered over pitchy trees all day still had such perfectly neat grey fur? While my mind flirted with the idea of squirrel for breakfast, a change in tone from the cows nearby told me a stranger approached them. Their calls were not frightened, but I snatched up my rifle anyway.

The wind came from the northwest, dry and greatly changed from the humid pressure of yesterday’s storm. This morning’s air was so pure, I was drinking it. I closed my eyes, lungs sipping the heady liquor of the mountains. Paradise.

Pressing through the tall grass, I stopped short, ducking quickly.

Coming down the valley through the center of the meadow was a solemn parade. As a group, their hooves made a chorus of swishing sounds through the tall grass, punctuated every now and again by a cry from their young. Thick muzzles snorted puffs of steam in the chilly air, shaggy brown fur cloaked their necks down to their barrel chests. Their males wore long, graceful horns like crowns. 

I was downwind but still I remained frozen, not wishing to startle their procession. 

A rending, polytonal bugle echoed through the canyon. I knelt lower like a serf bowing before the royal promenade of nobility. In fact the elk were rulers among the herbivores in the mountains; the deer and smaller creatures deferred to them. Even the wolf and bear seemed more inclined to pursue easier prey.

I felt the tightness of my stomach grinding against itself and remembered that I had not eaten since yesterday morning. There were some elk toward which my eye drifted as potential food but I could not bring myself to lift my rifle. This herd was one among only a few left in these mountains; the cattle ranchers having diminished their grazing turf. I did, however, see a troop of deer mincing along behind the elk like loyal subjects. 

The elk marched through the center of the pasture and made their way south toward the other side of the basin. I rose as the last of their party disappeared over the bluff.

Driven by the chafing of hunger, I left the grassy slopes of the pasture for the cool shadows of the forest. While elk browse on grasses in the spring and summer, deer forage leaves and shrubs year round: they walk among the damp creek beds where the vegetation is most tender. 

This is where I found a buck, young and in his first spring. 

I moved as if disturbing the air too quickly might alert the creature. The buck bent his head low to drink from the creek, I imagined he was conscious of his smart new set of antlers, poised prettily above his ears. I crouched behind a thicket, muffling my footsteps in the saturated grass that grew halfway into the slow-flowing tributary of Sallie Keyes Creek.

Silently, I released every drop of air from my lungs and stared down the barrel of my rifle at the spot exactly between his eyes. 

A trout blipped it’s head above the creek water and the deer jerked back. I lowered my weapon.

At that moment I could have still hit the buck, but the shot was no longer perfect. The cries of too many sorrowful beings still rang in my ears from imperfect shots: tortured, drawn-out deaths. I could now only tolerate sending another life into the next world via an instant and unexpected passage.

The buck resumed his drinking and I took aim again, bringing him down in one swift and immediate goodnight. I jumped over to his side of the creek and drew my knife, draining his neck to wash his last moments away quickly.

I took the carcass to calf camp where I lashed the legs to a stick for a gambrel and hauled it up a tree branch. Having thoroughly drained the buck, I peeled back the skin, fetching a very fine, healthy looking hide.

I opened him down the middle with my knife and reached inside the warm interior, unsticking the tendrils of fascia that held up the transparent tissue encasing the organs. This large, silken bag I disconnected from below the tail and lifted halfway out of the open body.

With practiced delicacy I opened the case of offal, taking extra care not to pierce the foul rumen or intestines. The kidneys I kept, removing their tough outer layer and interior ducts, leaving only the fresh, nutty meat. These I placed in my cast iron skillet with my next treasure: the large, radiant liver, its fabric soft yet imbued with so much of the creature’s nutrients. I detached the rest of the viscera from the throat and rib cage. 

I didn’t have the time to break down the carcass into cuts, so I slathered the whole thing with salt, pulled it down and hoisted it high up a live oak where it could hang above the fire. The meat dangled there, swinging over my fire pit, which I loaded up with pine needles and dried oak branches to create a thick smoke. This would keep the flies off and cure the meat some before I could come back and parse it up.

Rose was still asleep when I entered the cabin, which did not surprise me. Often, after a day of battle or even a small skirmish, my soldiers would rouse with difficulty. They feared me enough to get up with the reverie, but the harrowed look of exhaustion in their eye told me they might have slept until midday had it not been for the damn trumpet.

But I was not her colonel and she was not my soldier. I found myself hoping she would keep sleeping as I unloaded my haversack of foraged goods. In minutes I had the flames crackling brightly again and the cast iron pan heating up along with it. 

The liver was still warm with life in my hands; I sliced it thinly and coated the strips with a little flour and salt. Fragrant diced wild onion went into the pan first with a bit of lard. The fat melted quickly in the skillet like a snowy white iceberg and diffused the onion’s aroma with a juicy sizzle. 

When the green of the wild onion started to deepen, I placed the strips onto the pan with some salted fiddle heads. The caramelized scent of the liver’s sear filled the cabin. Once the color had darkened slightly I removed the fried pieces.

I was plating the slices when Rose’s breathing change. 

“Good morning,” she said, sounding foggy. She peeked out discreetly from the wolf queen’s embrace. Her hair fell about her face in dreamy distractions, her eyes blinked sleepily up at me.

“Hello, Miss Tico.” My stomach pooled with warmth.

“That smells lovely.” She stretched like a cat.

Words dried up in my mouth as I watched her wake up slowly. Shyly, I placed my offering on the trunk next to the bed and retreated to the corner with my food. I faced the fire, wanting to allow her some privacy.

“Is this…” Rose paused. “Liver?”

“You are not accustomed to eating it?” 

“Oh no, I’ve had it at the hotel in San Francisco, but never like this. It’s usually whipped up in some obnoxiously esoteric pâté,” Rose chuckled softly.

I sneaked a glance at her over my shoulder. She eagerly inhaled the organ meat. I smiled inwardly.

“I like how you’ve cooked it, it’s as if you respect the meat for what it is instead of hiding it.” She chewed thoughtfully. “The texture reminds me of a mushroom; something about it feels so replenishing.”

“The animals typically eat the organs of their prey first,” I remarked.

“Did you prepare this special, because I’m hurt?”

I shot her a look that must have communicated my distaste for having my intentions exposed.

“Why do you look embarrassed for caring?” Rose asked pointedly. “Am I so unbearable to you that you can’t acknowledge your own kindness?”

I had no idea how to answer that. 

In truth, I thought that giving her the impression of a gracious, nurturing host was a false representation of my character. I felt duplicitous —even slimy for letting her think I was anything other than a cruel wraith of a man.

“I apologize for causing you so much trouble.” She sounded deflated.

“It’s not like that.” My chest rumbled.

“Then what is it like?” 

I looked at Rose. Her eyebrows stood high on her forehead, her lips pursed and her face still stuck with some dried arnica. She was so serious, and yet always on the edge of sunlight.

I took a deep breath. 

“I’m not a good person, Miss Tico. Pretending I am is a lie.”

“You feel ashamed if I find you nice?” She narrowed her eyes incredulously. “What am I supposed to do, be afraid of you?”

I blushed. This was going badly.

“You probably should be.”

“Sweet Jesus,” she swore. “I’m not God here to weigh your life, Hux, I just need a little help off this mountain.”

Rose studied me with a piercing eye. Despite her words, I did feel measured.

“We can set out for the trail right away if you’re ready,” she said finally. “I won’t take any more of your time.”

“Whatever you need, Miss Tico,” I said. I felt like I had been standing on a tree branch that snapped out from underneath me.  _ No matter, it’s safer that she rejects you before she knows who you really are _ .

“Thank you for the food.” Rose’s voice startled me from my thoughts.

Her face had softened; her eyes dark as locust bark and regarding me with more compassion than I could bear.

“I’ll let you dress and meet you down at calf camp,” I said gruffly.

Leaving the cabin quickly, I shook off her charity and stalked angrily down the trail.

“I read something in one of your books.” 

“Hmm?”

“Far From the Madding Crowd,” by Thomas Hardy. It’s sitting on top of your trunk. I read some of it after you left the cabin yesterday afternoon.”

I was glad for the distraction. Rose sat behind me on Milli’s back as we climbed the switchbacks, her body pressed up against mine. 

She seemed much more comfortable with me on this, our third journey up to the trail. Having initially clasped her hands around my waist after climbing on, she had now relaxed and draped her arms loosely around me. A vice gripped my chest when one hand drifted innocuously to my hip.

“And what did you read, Miss Tico?” I asked.

“It went something like this:” 

_ To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world is almost a palpable movement. To enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. _

“Is that why you’re up here?” 

“To stand alone on a hill and quietly watch my stately progress through the stars?” I asked, letting my lips perk slightly.

“Don’t forget the part about avoiding the mass of mankind,” she said, like a fond ribbing.

“I could not have said it better myself,” I smirked.

“Don’t you think the ‘Walden’ trend is a bit unoriginal at this point?” she teased. “I mean, for educated men to run off and play cowboy in the High Sierras?” 

“No.” I deflected huffily. I didn’t mind talking about literature but I was uncomfortable with this line of personal questioning. “What brings you to Bishop Creek?” I redirected.

“More like what gets me out of San Francisco,” she said sarcastically.

“You don’t like the city?”

“I’m tired of hosting luncheons and charity balls so my father can feel like a man with old money. I’m not suited for that life.”

“And are you suited for roughing it out in Bishop Creek?”

“I can manage a small town and lack of infrastructure.” Rose shrugged. “I just want to be useful beyond embroidering cushions.”

“What will you do once you get to Owens Valley?”

“I’m going to marry my fiancé and help him start the mine up Bishop Creek Canyon. I want to open a school for the miners’ children.” The hopefulness in her voice made my heart skip involuntarily, even though she had only just alluded to her intended. 

“Why did he not marry you in San Francisco and bring you here himself?” I asked carefully.

She fell silent. 

_ Blame it _ ... A thought jabbed my mind.

“Miss Tico, does your fiancé know you’re coming to Bishop Creek?” I asked, my voice tinged with alarm.

“He promised to come back once the mine is running!” she blurted, “but I couldn’t stand being at home anymore, my father is seeing a new woman who is prejudiced against me because of my Vietnamese mother!”

“Miss Tico…”

“The horrible woman makes endless nasty comments about the Chinese railroad workers and their families in town, I couldn’t bear to hear her pointed remarks!”

“That’s dreadful, truly, but…”

“My fiancé said the mine would be fully operational by spring and he would come back for me, but April and May dragged on and I just couldn’t wait any longer! I forged a letter and it was no surprise my father was eager to cast me off in Fresno and…”

I raised my voice.

“Is no one expecting you in Bishop Creek, Miss Tico?” 

Rose’s flood of words dammed up. 

I continued, “If you were to join a pack train out of the Sierras and your fiancé had ridden to, say, Carson City as many businessmen often do, who would you stay with?”

“I…” she stuttered. “I don’t know.”

“That’s just capital,” I snarled, wheeling Milli’s head around. “You’ve really done it now, Miss Tico.”

She gasped, “I don’t understand, what are you doing?” 

“I won’t send you down into that lawless hellhole with a couple of gold panners!” 

“Please!” Rose grasped my arms. “I need to get to Bishop Creek, surely there’s someone you trust who can take me!”

I paused. Her slight withholding of the facts wasn’t intended as dishonesty, but this revelation did change my feelings about letting her go. 

“I suppose there is someone we can speak with,” I said grudgingly. “Shame we’ve been going the wrong way.”

“Where are we going?” she ventured. 

“To Florence Lake,” I replied. “To visit the Paiute.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The concept about squirrels being clean comes from John Muir’s book quoted at the opening of the chapter. But srsly how do the little tree rats do it??
> 
> The Tule Elk herds in the Sierra Nevadas were so diminished throughout the 1800s that in 1873 congress passed a bill protecting them.
> 
> Systemic racism and prejudice against Chinese American immigrants in San Francisco was so terrible that in 1869 a group of 800 people returned to China.
> 
> MY DUDES. What is up? How are you doing with the virus situation?? Thank you so much for reading this story and hanging out with me during quarantine!!


	5. We Visit the Nuumu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is based on Nuumu cultural resources and a primary source text by speaker and activist Sarah Winnemucca (1844-1891) called “Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims” published in 1883. 
> 
> I’d totally recommend reading that book here:
> 
> https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/winnemucca/piutes/piutes.html
> 
> I've been careful to only make references to the Nuumu culture that were directly from Winnemucca’s text and information I could find about the Nuumu in UC Santa Cruz' archives run by a Nuumu-led panel. There are several paraphrases from Winnemucca's book and I also included an excerpt so we could spend a minute hearing directly from this culture.

“If women could go into your Congress I think justice would soon be done to the Indians.”

—Sarah Winnemucca, 1883

It was afternoon by the time we had climbed down below the tree line to Florence Lake. 

The terrain at this elevation was still rugged, but the rich blue of the expansive waters and brilliant green flora growing around its shores seemed as hospitable as any lowland oasis.

The Kucadikadi, or “brine fly eater,” tribe of the Northern Paiute people currently lived tucked in a tree-hemmed clearing near the lake shore.

We came upon a group of young mothers splashing ankle-deep in the glittering waters with their small children. One woman bent over the water, holding her toddler so he could dip his little toes in the lake. The group paused their chatting for a moment to watch us pass.

“A few things,” I said crisply. “The Kucadikadi call themselves Nuumu —not Paiute. Paiute is a meaningless word that white people attributed to the Nuumu because they couldn't be bothered to learn their real names.”

“My, how rude,” Rose said into my ear. “Duly noted.” 

“Also, it’s not appropriate for a young unmarried woman to speak with any man outside her family, at least a cousin.”

“What?”

“I expect John will be more comfortable with communicating through me, so we’d ought to ensure that everything is explained beforehand.”

“That sounds absurd!”

“Since it is us who are asking the favor, I think we’d ought to defer, don’t you agree?”

She made a grumbling sound behind me but her arms tightened around my waist.

John Charlie met us at the edge of the Kucadikadi village. He wore finely tanned buckskin breeches and a matching shirt with delicate beadwork. 

“It is good to see you with a woman, Hux. ” He said in the Nuumu tongue.

“She is not my wife, she is betrothed to a man in Bishop Creek,” I replied, grateful that Rose could not understand this embarrassing dialogue.

“So you say, but she looks like your wife.”

“The calves are late this year.” I ignored his tease.

Rose and I dismounted Milli and we walked with John in between the cononical houses covered with fragrant chaparral and cedar boughs. Several women were weaving intricately patterned baskets beside a fire where men gutted trout and smoked it on thin wooden scaffolding. The food smelled tantalizing.

“The fawns and elk calves are late too.” John remarked. “What happened to your face? You look terrible!”

“Mountain lion.” My hand drifted up to the scabs on my forehead. “It’s been a challenging year and now I need to find someone to take this woman to Bishop Creek.”

“You’re asking me to bring her down?”

“I can’t leave the mountain and her husband doesn’t know to look for her here.”

“Did he mistreat her?” John frowned, giving Rose a scrutinizing glance. “You shouldn’t bring her back to a bad husband.”

“I don’t know why she didn’t tell him she was coming,” I huffed. “She’s a mystery to me.”

“This woman has not made her husband herself —she doesn’t tell him everything,” John said thoughtfully. “In the white people’s culture, is she free to choose someone else, like the Nuumu do?”

“No.” I was getting frustrated. “White people get very angry about women who don’t do what they’re told.”

John made a disgusted face. “Did you notice the miners in Bishop Creek Canyon crossed the river?”

“They ignored your agreement?” I shook my head.

“Their mining pushes the elk and deer out of the mountains.” John’s voice dropped to a grave pitch. “I’m not interested in dealing with them right now.”

“They are coyotes,” I said with distaste.

I began to suspect that perhaps the presence of a white person would be insensitive during this moment of tension between the Nuumu and the miners of Bishop Creek.

“We’ll return to the meadow.” I said to John, grabbing Rose’s elbow and preparing to turn back.

“You don’t have to leave.” John said. “Stay tonight and hear our storyteller from Pyramid Lake.”

“We can stay if you’re sure it’s not inappropriate.”

“Hux,” John got a malicious grin. “I know you’re not with the men of Bishop Creek because nobody likes you down there.”

“Oh shut up,” I scoffed as John laughed at me.

At my elbow I felt Rose looking at me expectantly.

“He’s asking us to stay the night,” I explained to her.

“Will he take me to Bishop Creek?” she asked.

“I’m afraid not.” Even while her face fell, a soaring rush of relief flooded me. “The Kucadikadi had some differences with the men of Owens Valley.”

Disappointment spread across Rose’s face.

John turned to other subjects, signaling that this was the end of the matter for him. After asking for many details about the mountain lion I killed, he turned and looked carefully at Rose.

“Why is her face beaten? Did her husband do that to her?”

“No, it was a band of fur trappers coming off Ward Mountain.” 

“Women have been killed on this trail,” John said.

“My horse found her. She rescued herself by playing dead like a possum.” 

John burst out laughing.

“A possum?” he snorted.

“She doesn’t know much about the mountains, but she’s quick.”

“Possums are tricksters! You’d better watch out!” John chuckled.

“I’m just trying to help her, it’s nothing.”

John leaned closer to me, the good-humored wrinkles around his eyes crinkling.

"It’s not nothing if she’s tricked her way into your heart.”

“She’s done no such thing!” My cheeks bloomed with embarrassment.

“There’s an old legend about Ahuitzotl, the water possum. The possum catches people with a big hand on the end of its tail, drags them down underwater and eats their eyes,” John snickered. 

“Charming story.” 

“I think this one has most certainly stolen your eyes!” John fizzed with laughter, he grinned at Rose.

I rolled my eyes.

“What is he saying about me?” Rose whispered.

Her face was so tweaked in puzzled indignation that I nearly laughed.

“He asked about your injury, so I told him about your ...evasive maneuvering.” I disciplined my lips not to curl with amusement. “He’s saying I’d better watch my back around a tricky little possum like you.”

Rose’s mouth dropped open.

“If it makes you feel better, he’s really just teasing me.” Now I couldn’t suppress a smile.

“How dare you!” she hissed, though I caught a glint of humor in her eye.

John watched this exchange and gave me a knowing look.

We sat with John, his cousins and friends for the evening meal. By the shore of the sparkling blue lake, the sunset seeped over the navy mountain silhouettes like a wet, streaky gouache. 

Rose stayed close to my side, uncertain how to engage with our hosts. As a basket of chinquapin and piñon nut meal and pieces of smoked trout passed around, she glanced often at the wives and young women gathered separately from the men.

“Are you alright?” I whispered to her. My sleeve brushed against her arm. 

“Am I supposed to eat over there with them?” She gestured toward the women.

“You can if you like.” I shrugged. “Or you can stay with me.” The last words came out a little more eager than I had hoped.

Rose flashed me a brave smile and stood, stepping out of the men’s circle and joining the young women. The Nuumu wives, grandmothers and older girls greeted her with smiles and curious posture. She sat politely on the edge of the group but quickly bonded with a young mother that had a chubby baby sitting up in her lap. In no time Rose was holding the baby, feeding him nut meal cake and chatting happily with the others.

“I see how you’re watching her.” John elbowed me.

I looked away from Rose’s glowing face.

“It’s no use, she’s chosen someone else.” 

“Has anyone told you how the Nuumu choose their husbands?” John asked.

“No.”

John explained, “If a man wants to marry a woman he doesn’t speak to her first. He shows her that he is a man above others through horsemanship and hunting. If he thinks he has caught her attention he will go to where she sleeps beside her grandmother, dressed in his most beautiful clothes, and sit down at her feet.

“If the girl isn’t awake, her grandmother wakes her up. The man does not speak to the young woman or grandmother, but if the woman is not interested, she will get up and go lay next to her mother. Some young men are persistent and will keep coming back for a year!” John laughed. “Some young women take time to make up their mind, but their parents never force them to marry someone they don’t want.

“When a woman is confident of her choice, she tells her grandmother, who tells her father, who tells the young man to come stand before him and declare his love for his daughter with a solemn promise to care for all her needs. The father then asks his daughter the same question. If she agrees, she promises her father to make her husband ‘herself.”

“Herself,” I repeated. “My people say ‘bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.”

“It’s not a small thing when wives promise their fathers to make their husbands ‘themselves,’ Hux,” John said. “They share in every danger with their men, care for their children together, and when the smoke eventually ruins their eyesight, they help one another with great tenderness.

“I stood at my wife’s bed again and again for months before she decided she wanted me.” John gave me a cheeky smile. “Perhaps try again.”

I grunted, knowing full well I couldn’t put his advice to use.

Still, when the village gathered around the clearing with the wives sitting next to their husbands and the children in their laps, I felt my heart jump into my throat when Rose knelt down next to me. 

“What do you have there?” The side of my mouth curled. She leaned toward me and laid out a handful of wildflower stems across her skirt. Her knee was inches from my leg so that a few sprigs of blossoms fanned out like a little bridge between us.

“They gave me flowers: each that match their name.” She practically reverberated with delight, her eyes danced in the firelight.

“Very fine,” I replied.

“Sadie is John’s wife,” Rose pointed to the woman with the baby. “She told me there is a flower festival every year when the unmarried women make scarves and crowns with the flowers of their name, then they dance and the young men are allowed to dance and sing with them.” She smiled flirtatiously.

“And did she tell you what women without flower names get to carry?” I lifted an eyebrow.

Rose’s face quirked.

“Prickly sagebrush or plain old ryegrass!” 

“Oh, you mean old thing!” She hit me with her bundle of flowers.

“Hey, easy!” I deflected. “The flower-named girls share their crowns with the other girls at the end of the night.”

“I want to wear roses in my hair for my wedding,” she said dreamily.

This mention slowed my racing heart some.

“I love it here,” she whispered, looking up at me through her thick dusky lashes.

“I’m glad you think so.” I warmed. “I’m sorry to delay your arrival to Bishop Creek.” 

“I understand,” Rose replied.

I was thankful she was taking it all in stride, but as I considered her disappointment I acknowledged to myself that I had lied: I wasn’t sorry to delay her departure at all. 

  
  


The circle quieted when an elderly man addressed the group. Rose decided she didn’t mind her lack of understanding the Uto-Aztec language: the words were rhythmic and soothing. The people were attentive but seated in relaxed positions, settled in for lengthy listening. Hux leaned back on his hands beside her.

“He’s saying the teacher Sarah Winnemucca is here from Pyramid Lake.” He tipped his head toward her, whispering softly. Hux nodded at the woman seated beside the speaking elder. 

Sarah Winnemucca c ommanded a radius of people’s attention with a self-possessed, queenly energy; the gathering seemed to turn on her axis . Her hair hung long down her shoulders and she wore an elegant ankle-length dress with dainty fringes draping from the collar and decorating the lower half of the skirt.

The elder gave the floor over to Sarah and Rose could tell she began her speech with a word of thankfulness and affection for the Kucadikadi. Then the teacher began weaving a story in lively, animated tones. The children’s eyes widened with the dramatic interjections depicting fire.

The side of Rose’s face tickled.

“She’s telling an origin myth.” Hux’s head was just behind hers. “A man and a woman heard a voice inside a bottle, so they tipped it over and found four people inside: two men and two women.”

He leaned forward as he translated, his cheek brushed against her hair . His shoulder’s warmth hovered just behind her back.

“Two of the people were good and they were the Nuumu —the woman cared for this pair, but the other couple was evil and they were tended by the man who ruled over them.”

Rose’s throat caught, Hux’s warm, resonant voice poured into her mind and she could hardly absorb the content of the story. She closed her eyes and leaned ever so slightly back against him. He didn’t pull away.

“Both of the pairs discovered fire, but the bad couple made a fire with thick smoke while the good couple’s fire made very little.”

She could smell the mountain on him, the warmth of his body radiated with juniper, pine and the faintest metallic hint of deer’s blood. With a delicious thrill his lips grazed her ear.

“The differences in smoke caused the pairs to regard one another as enemies, and soon they schemed against one another. Finally they found that foreigners had been plotting against them too, but they could not reconcile. This was the beginning of war and strife.”

Rose hummed in response, barely registering the words. She could feel Hux paused, listening with rapt attention to Sarah Winnemucca but her neck burned, tingling to be touched. The soft spot behind her ear called out to those lips. Heat crept up her body.

Sarah’s tone suddenly changed and Rose sat up straighter. The teacher had switched into English and Rose felt like everyone was looking at her. Hux too had shifted away, keeping a discreet distance.

Still talking with animated inflection, Sarah told her story. 

_ I was a very small child when the first white people came into our country. They came like a lion, yes, like a roaring lion, and have continued so ever since, and I have never forgotten their first coming. My people were scattered at that time over nearly all the territory now known as Nevada. My grandfather was chief of the entire Paiute nation, and was camped near Humboldt Lake with a small portion of his tribe, when a party traveling eastward from California was seen coming. _

_ When the news was brought to my grandfather, he asked what they looked like? When told that they had hair on their faces, and were white, he jumped up and clasped his hands together, and cried aloud,  _

_ ‘My white brothers, – my long-looked for white brothers have come at last!’ _

_ He immediately gathered some of his leading men, and went to the place where the party had gone into camp. Arriving near them, he was commanded to halt in a manner that was readily understood without an interpreter. Grandpa at once made signs of friendship by throwing down his robe and throwing up his arms to show them he had no weapons; but in vain, – they kept him at a distance.  _

_ He knew not what to do. He had expected so much pleasure in welcoming his white brothers to the best in the land, that after looking at them sorrowfully for a little while, he came away quite unhappy. But he would not give them up so easily. _

Sarah described with great sadness the generosity of her grandfather, Captain Truckee. While he approached his white brothers with generosity, their treatment of him alternated between indifference and abusive manipulation. Nothing seemed to win their loyalty, even after Truckee fought with them against the Mexicans and delivered to them the three Washone men who had killed two white cowboys.

Rose’s heart clenched with sadness when Sarah told how two little girls were out digging roots and never returned, but the white settlers of Fort Bidwell would not prosecute the person who killed them. She glanced at Hux, wondering how he was absorbing these accounts. He stared at Sarah, unblinking. Not a muscle on his face flinched as if he had expected nothing less from the vicious people Sarah described. A cold feeling settled in her stomach, were the settlers at Bishop Creek like this?

Sarah finished her tale with a promise to speak out for the rights of the Nuumu people. The group responded with a song, which Rose didn’t understand but felt alluded to unity and solidarity. Hux wasn’t singing but he had slid a little closer to her by the time the song concluded.

Once the circle fell silent, John called to Hux, asking a question while pointedly gesturing toward Rose. 

“Everyone would like you to tell a story from your people.” Hux smiled down at her.

“My... people?” Rose said, perplexed.

“I think they’re wondering why you don’t look like me.” He blushed.

“It’s awful, but my mother died when I was born,” she said sadly. “I don’t know any stories from China.”

“Bible story, maybe?” he offered, giving her a wincing half-smile.

“Why don’t you tell one?” 

“Nope,” Hux said quickly. “After Miss Winnemucca’s story, I think I’ll keep my mouth shut. I can translate, if you like.”

“Alright.” Rose let out a deep breath through pursed lips and scanned the crowd of patiently waiting listeners. Suddenly her face brightened with an idea. She scooped up a clay jug that sat by the fire and stood, clearing her throat.

“Once upon a time, there was a man named Archimedes,” she began, giving Hux a sidelong look to cue his translation. His face flickered with pleased surprise and he followed close behind her in the Numic Uto-Aztecan language. 

“He lived in a far away place called Greece where he served the king by solving all the problems in the land.”

Hux imitated her tone while following the typical pauses and dramatization of this storytelling format.

“One day the king gave him a problem: there were many people bringing him gold, but he didn’t know whether it was proper gold, or fake gold. There was much false gold at that time.”

For the briefest instant, alarm flashed across Hux’s features and Rose’s throat went dry. Just as soon as she had seen it, Hux’s face went blank and he translated.

Rose shook off the moment. “So while Archimedes was wondering how to tell which golden nuggets were real, he took a bath.”

She picked up another basin with water and filled the jug in her hand all the way to the top. “Come look!” She motioned to a young girl who was perhaps about seven or eight. Not making a connection, Rose looked at Hux. “Can you ask the children to come closer and see?”

“Kemma, tooamu.” Hux gestured for them to join Rose in the middle of the circle. “Tudzu’u.”

Tentatively, several children came out from among their parents, though many stayed back from shyness, craning toward her curiously. Rose held out the jug and picked up a large rock. With a precociousness that stirred a chuckle in Hux’s chest, she made the rock walk like a person toward the jug. A few children laughed.

“Archimedes got into his bathtub and noticed that when he put himself in the water, some of it spilled out!” Rose dropped the rock into the water and a great slop of water sloshed over the brim. “He shouted, ‘EUREKA!’ and leaped out of the bathtub —he had discovered how to tell if something was gold or not!”

The children did not wait for Hux’s translation to appreciate the climactic splashing moment of the story. Rose also did not need a translator to know they were asking her to repeat the “Eureka” section. They shrieked with delight when Rose demonstrated again and again the principle of displacement, sloshing and yelling “Eureka” until the children were all mimicking her like a dozen little cat birds.

If Rose had planned on adding anything else, it was quickly derailed by the animated chaos of the children. Eventually an elder reorganized them with another story, and everyone went back to their seats.

“Well done,” Hux whispered as she sank back down next to him.

“Not bad for a future teacher, eh?” Rose elbowed him playfully.

“Brilliant.” His eyes softened and Rose’s chest pattered with absurd happiness.

“Did I say something wrong at the beginning?” she asked.

“Hmm.” Hux’s brows met in the middle. “The gold bit was unfortunate. The Nuumu have credible reason to believe gold is all the white people care about.”

“Oh damn it!” Rose said, beating her fists on her knees. “How incredibly stupid! And after such a heartbreaking story before!”

“Now you know.” Hux bent toward her consolingly until their shoulders were touching. “I think the splashing part made up for it.” His eyes sparkled.

“Did you like that?” She grinned.

“I did.” He flashed her an actual smile with teeth.

“I can’t wait to have a little one room school house with a row of neat benches, slates and chalk!” she sighed.

Hux’s mouth quirked, his green eyes searched her face. “Maybe you should have a mountain school with jugs and rocks.”

“It would be hard to teach the alphabet with rocks,” she snorted.

The last story finished with another song, and as the people got up from around the fire, John approached Rose and Hux.

“You can bring Rose into my house,” he said, his face noting the way Rose and Hux’s shoulders had parted quickly.

“I think she should sleep beside Sadie’s grandmother.”

“Sadie’s sister is with her grandmother.”

“Can they both be there?”

“No, there’s a man courting Sadie’s sister and Rose would be in the way.”

Hux frowned uncomfortably.

“Is there a problem?” Rose asked.

“Just working out sleeping arrangements.” Hux‘s cheeks tinged red.

“Oh?” Her brows shot up.

“Would you be opposed to...” He bit his lip. “Sleeping in John and Sadie’s house… with me?”

“Not at all, that’s fine.” Rose looked somewhat relieved. “I feel completely safe with you, you’re like a brother.” She gave him a sweet smile.

Hux returned the warm look but something inside him transmitted a crestfallen air.

John and Sadie set out deerskins and furs for them on the other side of the fire inside their small, smoke-perfumed dwelling. They exchanged pointed looks and giggled while Hux growled at John and exchanged words for which Rose could not imagine the meaning.

Finally, John, Sadie and their baby were settled and Rose curled up under a few bobcat skins sewed together. Hux’s boots crunched across the sand coming toward the house; he had gone to check on Milli. He made a small grunt ducking into the doorway and crept toward her. Hux paused, hovering over the bed. Rose kept her eyes closed but felt every inch of her body tingling. There really wasn’t any room for him, besides directly beside her. A rush of warmth flooded up her back when she heard him slip off his boots and jacket and climb underneath his fur blanket next to her. Her eyelids fluttered open.

In the muted firelight, his fair, freckled skin glowed, his face pointed towards the stars peeking through the open chimney. Without his hat, his normally slicked-back red hair hung in charming little strays about his forehead. Laying on his back, he seemed very distant and polite about their nearness. Rose battled with the urge to tuck back his hair but instead she suppressed a cough, covering her mouth.

“Sorry, it’s a bit smokey in here usually,” he whispered. With his head turned toward her, she could see his lips in contrast with his pale skin. They were exceptionally full, almost feminine if they weren’t framed by such a strong, firmly set jaw line shadowed with cinnamon stubble.

“My lungs are used to the ocean air, I suppose.” She coughed again.

“Goodnight, Miss Tico,” Hux whispered.

“Goodnight, Hux,” she replied.

As breathing deepened inside the chamber, Rose watched a thread of moonlight reach down into the house. It started with a circle of light cast on the cedar-bough wall and then crept toward them across the floor until the moonlight struck a sleeping Hux’s hair and illuminated his fiery locks like a bonfire. His breathing came deep and slow, his lips parted in innocent abandon.

Slowly, with the movement she had observed him practice with animals that startle easy, she reached up and brushed back his hair. She watched his face to see if she was caught. His light copper lashes didn’t move, he registered no reaction until a moment later when a guileless, unhindered smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. A dream smile.

She was tempted to do it again, her chest ached with it, but she forced herself to roll over and close her eyes.

When Hux woke up, his mind grasped at the corner of a dream but only a faded image remained: wild roses tucked in shining black hair. 

As his consciousness drifted back into his body, he heard coughing and felt his hand move in conjunction with the sound like he was holding a soft, feminine waist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Nuumu tribes were known by their diet from their particular bioregion. The Mono Lake/Owens Valley Nuumu were called Kucadikadi which means "Brine Fly Eaters." 
> 
> Funny story, in June these brown moths have a crazy boom in the mountains and I was cleaning a cabin in Aspendell that was literally COVERED in moths!! Some of them got cooked on the lightbulb and I thought they totally smelled like Nutella. Maybe not so bad to eat? I was too grossed out to try.
> 
> The language is translated using the Northern Paiute Language Project out of University of California Santa Cruz. http://paiute.ucsc.edu
> 
> Tell me what you think of this chapter! How do you like the mounting tension between our ginger cowboy and clever science teacher?


	6. Millicent Throws a Shoe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 3 of GingerRoseWeek2020: Millicent
> 
> There’s a lil moment in there for @ElfMaidenOf Light, based on some beautiful forest friends who she saw recently!

There is a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called  _ St. Augustine’s Ladder _ .

He says you can become a better person if you think about overcoming your vices like climbing a ladder, conquering one ignoble flaw at a time.

That morning, I had slid down quite a few rungs. 

We were riding back from Florence Lake when I began to recount my lapse of character. As Miss Tico gripped my waist I couldn’t stop thinking about how pleasant it had been to wake up with the sweet curve of her arse tucked against my hips. Her head had fit just below my chin: in those early hours I couldn’t resist brushing my lips against that shining river of black hair. 

The line between wakeful decision and sleeping instinct was hazy. She twisted against me with an unconscious hum that sent sparks up through my center. When my arm slid protectively around her, her fingers laced with mine. I was hardly capable of acknowledging to myself what was happening, but my rough hand closed around her small one and she pulled it to her heart. 

As we rode back up the switchbacks, pivoting tightly with each corner, I could feel her taking that same liberty cloaked in the necessity of holding on to me. The angle of Milli walking down the steep slope made Rose practically lay on my back, her arms wrapped around my waist and her hands fanned out over my belly like she could feel my guts churning with desire for her.

I’m not a praying man, but I thanked God the brisk chill of the mountain morning contacted my face and neck. 

“So, what now?” she asked quietly when we reached a flat part of the trail.

“Now we wait for the rest of the calves, get them all branded and then see about somebody keeping an eye on them while I take you to Bishop Creek.” I answered.

“Seems like a lot of trouble for you to keep me that long.” 

“It’s no trouble.”

“I want to help,” she said, plucking up a brave tone of voice. “I can pull calves, drive the herd, help with the branding.”

The lingo sounded strange in her mouth and it made the corners of my lips perk up.

“And what will your fiancé say when I bring you off the mountain a rough ranching woman?”

Instantly, I regretted saying it. Her contact against me eased up noticeably, her grip around my waist dropped.

“I guess that will teach him for leaving me in San Francisco,” Rose said bitterly.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“It’s not your fault,” she said with defiance. “Hell, you’re the only person who will listen to me.”

I kept my mouth closed for a while, struggling with the present thought of her husband-to-be while feeling the warmth of her compliment.  _ Jesus, you just can’t stop stabbing another man in the back can you? _

My insides started to flail. Something inside me told me to push Miss Tico away.

Just then Milli slipped on a rock and she stumbled. We were already pivoting on a tight switchback and Rose tumbled over Milli’s hindquarters.

I leaped out of the saddle with a small yell.

“I’m fine!” Rose scraped herself off the trail, patting her dirty skirt and wiping her face.

“Did you fall hard?” I brushed off the dust from her shoulder and the back of her head.

“It was nothing, hardly the trouble my spoiled pony would give me, anyhow,” she said brusquely. 

“You continue to surprise me, Miss Tico.” I gave her a small smile and picked a bit of sage from her hair. 

I strode over to where Milli was picking up her hoof. “Looks like Milli threw a shoe.” 

“Oh, stars!” Rose frowned. She ran up the switchback and ducked into the scrubby sage and chaparral bushes. 

“Find it?” I called, unwedging a bent nail from Milli’s foot. The horse’s head swung around and looked at me grudgingly. Bending over, I could feel the midmorning sun beating against my back.

A crackle of brush down in the draw below us made my head jerk up. 

“Got it!” Rose’s voice punctuated my stillness, she was coming out of the bushes holding aloft the shiny metal shoe.

“Psst!” I signaled to her with a sharp whisper. “Hey, Possum!”

The scrunched up expression on her face melted when she saw what I was looking at.

A mother grizzly bear and two cubs were crossing the creek several hundred yards below us, heading southward down the mountain. Rose’s face flashed with alarm, but I thought we were too high above them to present a threat, so long as we didn’t disturb them now. I put my finger over my lips and motioned for Rose to come closer.

The bear padded across the water, her glossy brown fur shining cinnamon in the sunlight. Her ears were pricked toward her two precocious cubs. The growling little bears loped and bowled ahead of her. The mother bear halted for a moment, her dog-like nose held up in the air, sensing the information carried along the wind. With an icy feeling, I observed the breeze at my back and watched the she-bear register our presence. She swiveled her thick shaggy head toward us and peered up the mountain.

With a heavy snort, the mother bear sent a low yowl to her cubs and they bolted down the mountain, crashing oafishly through the bracken.

As the noise retreated into silence I could hear Rose begin to breathe. I realized I had been gripping her arm.

“That was incredible!” Rose gasped.

“And incredibly dangerous,” I murmured. “We’ll take it slow and give them a chance to put some distance between us.”

“Looks like we’re going nowhere fast anyway.” Rose held up Milli’s shoe. She tucked it in the saddle bag.

I grabbed Milli’s bridle to start walking, but the horse squealed and tossed her head.

“I can’t fix it until we get back to calf camp!” I chided her. Clicking out the side of my mouth, I coaxed Milli down the trail.

“You talk to your horse like she’s a person,” Rose snorted.

“She’s as much a person as I need out here,” I said frostily.

“Oh yes, right, what was the famous quote from  _ Walden _ ? ‘I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude,” she mocked.

“If you’re going to reference Thoreau, at least acknowledge he has a point,” I sniffed.

“Well, I don’t agree!” she said, “I spent too many of my growing up years all alone in an enormous house on Mission Avenue with nobody but a stuffy governess who wouldn’t even take me to the beach.” 

“What about the teas and charity balls?” I teased. “Surely solitude seems preferable compared to shuffling around in one of those enormous cage crinolines.”

“Careful, a scruffy cowboy discussing a lady’s unmentionables is very frowned upon in society.” She gave me a scolding eyebrow.

“Believe me, ma’am,” I leaned into my drawl with the classy plantation accent not unlike my father’s, “I know a thing or two about society.”

“Good sir!” Rose put her hand over her chest and pretended to fan her face. “I always knew you had the manners of a gentleman!”

I let out a low laugh and kicked a rock in the trail. When I glanced at Rose she was staring at me, her brown eyes heavy with something I couldn’t interpret.

“Why didn’t you go back to Arkansas?” she asked after some time had gone by. “After the war?”

“I left on bad terms with my father and I didn’t want anything to do with his estate.”

Rose stopped walking. “His estate?”

My stomach pitched, I hadn’t meant to give that away.

“California is my home now.” I kept walking and looked at my boots.

“Wait a moment.” She caught me. “When I was talking about teas and charity balls… you came of age going to those, didn’t you?”

I grumbled.

“And you can dance,” she said triumphantly. “Not like some tavern house Virginia Reel —we’re talking a hoity-toity five part French Quadrille with no less than an eight piece orchestra and embossed dance cards! Am I right?”

“You’re not wrong, Miss Tico,” I glowered.

“I would have never guessed!” Rose howled. “Tell me something else!”

“Miss Tico, I don’t take kindly to…”

“Please humor me?” she begged. “We both agree that none of that matters here in the Sierras.” 

“Alright.” I gave in. “I play the cello.”

“No!” She clapped her hand over her mouth.

“I studied under a master cellist until I was sixteen.” Her look of amused shock made my cheeks turn red. “Now that’s hardly fair, Miss Tico. You must have been forced to pick up some impractical skill yourself.”

“Who said anything about practical?” Rose laughed. “The cello is a lovely instrument. I just can’t reconcile the rough cowboy I see with a crisply dressed musical plantation owner!”

“I’m no plantation owner!” I snapped.

Her brow creased, she knew she’d hit a touchy spot. I was ashamed to let her see me that way.

We had been walking below the tree line for a while now, Blayney Meadow wasn’t too far off.

“When we get to calf camp you can head up to the cabin and rest if you like,” I said. “I’m not the most skilled of farriers so it might take me while to re-shoe Milli.”

“I’d rather stay and help, if that’s alright,” she replied.

“Suit yourself.” I shrugged.

“What is your favorite song?” she interjected.

“What?”

“On the cello?”

“Oh.” I looked up at the swaying tree tops. The meadows were warm with sunlight, the heat of the day diffusing the fragrant pines and juniper in a pungent, liquid smell.

“I think Saint-Saëns’  _ Le Cygne, _ The Swan.”

“Hmmm. That is very nature-inspired.”

“I think I wanted to be out here in a place like this for as long as I can remember,” I sighed.

Rose regarded me thoughtfully.

“Me too.”

  
  


In November of 1862, the Army of the Mississippi and the Army of Kentucky reformed into the Confederate Army of Tennessee, having sustained too many casualties to remain separate forces. Because the 1st Arkansas Infantry Regiment had been a detachment of the Mississippi, this consolidation was nothing less than an upgrade of my power and influence.

This is when all my work striving for the attention of my seniors paid off. 

President Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee commissioned General Braxton Snoke over the Army of Tennessee. I was the head of one corps —half of our troops; the other half was led by my rival, General Kylo Ren. We were the largest Confederate field army in the Western theater of the war and we hell-bent on making the Union Army of the Cumberland feel it. 

But our leadership was divided.

“General Snoke, sir,” I said, my tone severe. “We have their right wing falling back but the Cumberland is dug in at the road. Their reinforcements continue to buffet our attack.”

I nudged my dapple gray gelding forward to keep up with Snoke and Ren as they trotted down the street headed north of Murfreesboro.

“General Hux, your performance has fallen below my standards. My disappointment can not be overstated,” Snoke said icily.

“They’re holding us off, General,” I pushed back, shouldering the crushing weight of Snoke’s scorn. “I fear our attack is untenable.”

“Taking their supply line from Nashville is critical, Hux.” Kylo Ren’s impossibly low voice crept under my skin. “Crushing Rosencrans and the Cumberland is a matter of cutting off their lifeblood.”

“Sir.” I rode up closer to Snoke, ignoring Ren’s comments. “It’s been two days of heavy fighting and we have already lost more than twenty thousand men. Rosencrans’ hold on the Stones River may no longer be worth the heavy casualties.”

“General Hux’s advice will make you look weak.” Ren’s face twisted with disdain.

“It isn’t weak to regroup and ensure that we don’t lose ground by overextending our reserves!” I snarled back.

“I find your lack of conviction utterly disturbing.” Ren drawled. He peered at me, his dark eyes piercing like smoldering coals. My throat tightened. He turned to Snoke. “Let me lead an attack on the left flank and we’ll break through.”

“Such spunk from this one.” Snoke regarded Ren, his protégé, as if he had heard nothing I said. “Rally your men for an attack on the left flank, Ren. We’ll bend Rosencrans’ line until he breaks.”

Shooting me a confident smirk, Ren dug his heels into his black stallion’s sides and cantered off toward the reserves.

I was watching him go when the blow came to the side of my head.

My arse hit the ground before I could grasp what happened. The impact gripped my lungs and held them, forcing my lips to draw tight, undignified gasps. I could have sworn the side of my head sprouted a goose-egg shaped like the butt of a Colt .45 pistol.

General Snoke holstered his gun and looked down at me, sneering. “Don’t insult me again.”

I dragged my limbs off the dusty street, forcing my diaphragm to pull air into my chest. The feeling was all-too familiar, which was comforting in a way. At least a lifetime’s worth of beatings had given me a mental script for moments like this.

_ If you don’t want to get hit, don’t fail. Or better: replace him. _

  
  


“Hand me those pliers.” 

I had Milli’s hoof between my legs and was fitting the round metal shoe to the shape of her newly filed and cleaned hoof.

“It still looks too wide,” Rose said.

My face, already fixed in a grimace of effort, lifted up toward hers in what was meant to be a dark expression, but the corner of her mouth twitched.

Damned if she wasn’t right.

Growling, I dropped Milli’s hoof and took the shoe over to the stump, hammering on the side of it. The ringing of the blows vibrated up my arm and echoed through the trees.

Milli danced with irritation when I leaned against her leg. She hated having her feet handled. When finally she offered a hoof, the shoe perched nicely around the rim of her foot.

“Alright, hand me a nail?”

Admittedly it was easier completing this farriery task with Miss Tico’s help. But I wasn’t about to give her any ideas.

I tapped the nails neatly into Milli’s foot.

“She’s giving you some eye,” Rose warned.

“I’m almost finished.”

“I’d watch out if I were you.”

“I know how to handle my own h….OUCH.” I dropped the hammer and it landed on the toe of my boot.

“DAD BLAMING MOTHER OF FUCKING GOD.”

My arse cheek was smarting from a meaty bite, but my foot had taken a worse beating from the hammer.

“Mercy!” Rose stifled a laugh. “You have quite the mouth on you!” 

I limped toward the creek but did not escape her fussing. While I was maneuvering to sit down on one cheek by the trickling water, Rose had taken hold of my boot and pulled it off. Before I could protest, she yanked off my stocking. She stopped short.

“That is the ugliest foot I have ever seen.” She covered up her mouth.

“A foot is for walking, Miss Tico,” I growled, plunging my foot into the cool, numbing water. “Not for sitting in a shop window.”

“I haven’t seen a lot of feet, Hux, but that is one bony, strange looking foot,” she giggled. “Your toes are longer than some people’s fingers!”

“You should know that people in the south find it very indiscreet for a young lady to look at, much less comment on a gentleman’s feet,” I said sternly.

“Those oaths that just came out of your mouth were the least gentlemanly thing I’ve ever heard in my life!” She fizzed with laughter.

“Apologies.” I flushed, smiling slightly.

“Don’t mind that,” she said. “We don’t have to be those people anymore. We’re free out here.”

Rose sat down and unlaced her boots. Slowly, she rolled down her stockings until she had revealed her small, unremarkably short feet. She gave me a look which suggested she viewed this revelation as some kind of solidarity of unflattering feet, but I found her petite ankles and shining brown skin enchanting. Rose let her legs hang over the soggy grass into the clear waters of the creek. She released a small sigh.

There was a friendliness to her lack of words; a quiet companionship we shared by the creek. I appreciated that we could wordlessly agree to enjoy the sounds of the mountain together, like Emerson said, “Let us be silent —so we may hear the whisper of the gods.”

Indeed the whisper of unsaid things seemed to grow louder in our quiet reflection. The small trickle of her leg moving in the water was the only sound distracting me from my body shouting to be nearer to her.

“Hungry?” I asked finally. 

Rose nodded. “I see some of that wild onion over on the other side of the creek.” She pointed to a group of dark stems poking up a few yards from the creek.

“That will be fine with some venison,” I said.

She wandered off barefoot into the bracken while I stood and rolled my stocking back over my foot. It did look rather ugly all purple and bruised.

I finished shoeing Milli and set about preparing for supper.

The deer would take a while to parse into cuts, but I was proud to have a butterflied loin roast sizzling in the pan by the time Rose returned. I was sawing off strips of meat to lay on a scaffold above the fire when she laid out her harvest.

Her skirt was tied up in a knot just below her bare knees and her hair fell loose and wild around her shoulders. Riding in the sun all morning had given her a ruddy radiance that I couldn’t take my eyes off of. 

“In the saddle pack is a smaller knife.” I gestured toward the attached leather bags hanging from a tree branch. “You can chop up those onions and put them in the pan.”

Rose nodded and stood over the packs, rummaging inside.

“What’s this?” She pulled out a handled stamp that flashed in the sunlight. “It’s from the old Lucas & Turner Co. Bank in San Francisco.”

“Put that back!” I nearly kicked over the cast iron pan as I stood up.

“William Tecumseh Sherman?” Her eyes widened as her fingers grazed over the tiny backwards letters of the stamp. 

I lunged toward her and seized her wrist.

“Miss Tico, I asked you to get my knife, not look through my things.”

“That belonged to General Sherman —of the Union army.” Her eyes narrowed. “How did you get that?”

“Leave it be, Miss Tico!” I shouted, my nose inches from her face. 

Her brown eyes were framed with an expression that had changed from curiosity to suspicion. Silently she dropped the stamp into the open mouth of the saddle bag, never taking her eyes off me.

The snarl faded from my lips and I watched her eyes start to shine glassy with moisture. She bit her lip and turned away, blinking away tears.

I hurt her.

“Miss Tico…” Shame poured into my veins. 

I caught her arm.

“I’m sorry I yelled.” 

Her eyes fell on my hand and then traced upward to my face.

“Will you eat something?” I offered, my head tilting toward the fire.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I shouldn’t have looked through your things.”

“Let’s just forget about it.” I shrugged.

Rose seemed content enough to do this, and by the time the meat was finished cooking she was chatting happily from her seat by the fire. I listened quietly, enjoying the spring-water lightness of her spirit as she explained the intricacies of the quadratic formula. 

“Where did Milli come from?” Rose asked after a brief period of silence. She set aside her empty tin plate and wiped her mouth on the back of her shirt sleeve like a filthy cowhand instead of a lady.

“Hmm?” A wave of acid hit my stomach.

“Did you buy your horse in Bishop Creek?” 

I sighed. There was no way to hide from her.

“No.” I wiped my hands on my leather chaps. “Milli was a cavalry horse from the Army of Tennessee.”

“You kept her from the war?” Rose ventured carefully.

“In a way, yes,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

I unscrewed the cap off my flask of whiskey and took a sip. I gave her a sharp look. “I stole her.”

“Something tells me this relates to what I found in your saddle bag.” She squinted at me.

I took a deep breath.

I had never told anybody about it. For four years I had been pushing it down, suppressing my feelings. Now, in the quiet with Rose, I felt it all coming up.

In fact, a nasty feeling in my gut was rolling toward the surface —pushing its way out of my mouth. 

Suddenly I stood and emptied the contents of my stomach onto the carpet of pine needles in front of us.

“Jesus, God!” I coughed and spat.

Rose’s eyes rounded like dinner plates, her hand slapped over her nose and mouth. She swerved around and retched in the grass.

Once she started, she didn’t stop. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals was actually published in 1886, but I’m willing to fudge a few things like that for the sake of including them in our story. Mostly because The Swan is my favorite cello piece, haha. As always, I’ll let you know when I eff with history, lol!
> 
> The Battle of Stones River was a precursor to the Chickamunga Campaign with included the famous Battle of Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain. For this story I’m inserting Supreme Leader Snoke as the Confederate General Braxton Bragg, who so poorly handled the Battle of Stones River (Hux was right obvi) that Jefferson Davis actually sent another general to replace him. Kylo Ren, or the actual general who lead the second corps of the Army of the Tennessee to try and puncture Rosencrans’ defensive line did end up breaking through but was met with heavy artillery that broke up the attack. The Confederates gave up control of central Tennessee and the Union Army of the Cumberland won.
> 
> I noticed that in Star Wars, Hux is usually right and he even takes responsibility for his failures, but Snoke and Ren are always beating the crap out of him! What!
> 
> Confession: I have had my ass bitten by a horse when I was cleaning out her hoof.


	7. Supper Gets Its Revenge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! We have a dancing scene for @CaroHux and @huluppu! You ask, I deliver!!
> 
> Day 4 GingerRose Week 2020: Another Life, Another Time

That night had many similarities to the one before, only this one was far less pleasant.

Once the poison had settled into our guts, it was like every meal for a week came back to haunt us as we lay on the pine needles at calf camp. 

“Miss Tico?”

I lay on my back, listening to an owl to keep myself from vomiting the latest bit of water I’d tried to choke down. 

“You alright?” I called to her again.

Her coughing and spitting echoed off the ring of pines.

I had hauled her off the log where she was draped arse-up, dry heaving like an old cat. Holding her head in my lap, I’d poured a bit of water into her puffy lips and pushed her sticky hair out of her eyes. She lay there limply for a while. Now I wasn't sure if she'd held in the water long enough to make it count.

“How is there still more?” she moaned.

At the thought of more, a sour feeling started to curdle in my guts. I flipped over on my side and let loose again. 

Slick sweat pooled on my face; my whole body burned like a live coal. 

Pine needles and twigs crackled behind me, I looked up to find Rose crawling along the ground. In the stark light of a waxing moon I could make out that she had peeled everything off except her thin white shift. Somehow that information registered in my brain without my body responding to it. I curled up and shivered.

“Hux,” came a weak voice. “Where is that water?”

I lifted myself on one elbow and shoved my canteen across the ground in her direction.

The sound of the lid unscrewing and a glug of water tilting in the canister made my stomach slosh. From the sputters and gasps that followed, it didn’t do her much good either.

“Are you hot?” she panted.

“Hotter than blazing Jesse.”

“We should get to the creek.” Her voice was wavering with exhaustion. 

The idea struck me as a good one. That cool damp grass would feel like heaven against my boiling skin. I steeled my stomach and got up on all fours, shaking with the exertion.

I crawled over to where Rose lay sprawled out on the ground, her hair filled with long pine needles.

“Come on, Possum.” I nudged her. “We aren’t dead yet.”

“I think I am dead,” she groaned, clutching her stomach.

I summoned every last bit of grit from the corners of my being and wrapped my arms around her. To this day I can’t remember if I stood or dragged her on the ground the thirty yards to the creek but my head pounded like hell when we finally dropped in the grass. My whole body melted like rubber.

Rose turned away and choked something up into the grass and I reached like I was going to move her hair out of the way but my arm just flailed uselessly. 

The grass did feel wonderful. Slowly, I stripped off my shirt and let the ground, cold from the aquifer below us, leech the evil heat out of my bones. 

Some time went by and we had both lay flopped there long enough without vomiting, I wondered if we were either dead or turned a corner.

“Are you awake?” I asked, my voice raw and husky.

“Yes.”

“Feel a little better?”

“No.”

I inched closer to her. She rolled onto her back and took big gulps of air. Her little rounded face was so slick with sweat, her small body was handling it a lot worse than mine.

“Dry heaving again?” I pulled a clump of hair out of her mouth.

“Can’t stop.”

“Here.” I pulled off a thick stem of wild mint, which luckily grew plentiful around the creek bed. “Put this under your tongue.” I plucked off a leaf and offered it to her. She blinked at me and looked hazily at my hand.

“Open.” 

She opened her mouth.

“Stick out your tongue.”

I tucked the leaf ever so gently behind her back teeth and she closed her mouth around my finger.

“OUCH!” My had recoiled quickly. “Miss Tico, you bit me!”

“Didn’t mean to,” she muttered.

I popped a mint leaf under my tongue. The cooling oil in the rough-textured plant felt sharp on the mealy undercarriage of my tongue. I read somewhere that mountain varieties of herbs are hardier and therefore more potent.

We must have slept for several hours because the next time I woke up my intestines felt sore but slightly less tangled and my fever was lower. Meanwhile, Rose doubled up coughing, her cheek was hot to the touch and the moonlight on her formerly white undergarment showed damp with perspiration. I sat up and fumbled around for my canteen.

“Drink something,” I ordered.

“Put me in the creek,” she croaked.

“That water is freezing, Miss Tico.” 

“Do it.” Her back arched with another straining cough. “I beg you.” Her voice was too weak and I knew she wasn't one to beg. It scared the hell out of me.

I swallowed, thinking about the risk of her catching a chill on top of whatever had poisoned our insides.

“Stop being modest and help me.” The irritation in her voice made me feel better about taking a chance. She was so strong.

Crouching over her, ignoring the hundred daggers in my guts, I slid one arm under her shoulders and the other under the middle of her thighs. Her head drooped against my chest and her voice made a dreadful rattling sound when I stood.

I looked down at her face, thinking this was a bad plan.

“Don’t look so worried.” She gave me a hazy smile. “We’ll laugh about this someday.”

I stepped cautiously in the creek, letting the water rush around my knees. Slowly, I lowered her body into the snowmelt. She started to squeak and I pulled her up.

“No, do it,” Rose said. “But be quick about it, Lord, you are so wishy washy!”

“Miss Tico, if you’re trying to insult me so I drop you in the creek you’ll have to try harder.” I held back a smile and bent over carefully.

“How about your hair, should I make fun of that?” A small slit of her eye opened.

I held her up to her neck under the water and admittedly the blood-freezing stream was a balm to my sweaty body once I got over the initial chill. 

“No, Miss Tico,” I said, my voice catching as the paper thin fabric of her shift became translucent in the moonlight. Her raven locks swam around my legs like Medusa’s serpentine tresses. “Never make fun of the hair.”

She breathed slowly, ruffling the water as it carried away the pine needles stuck to her. I focused on her face to take my mind off my stomach and the heart-stopping beauty of the landscape just under that floating white fabric. 

Her eyes opened.

“That will be enough, thank you,” she said. I drew her out of the water and teetered a little bit. I was weakened by a night of puking my guts out, but more so by the way the water sluiced around her enchanted hills and valleys. The soaking shift clung to her like nothing.

It took more of my grit than anything I had done all night to steel myself against looking.

When we collapsed in the soft grass I held her dripping, shivering form against me, too spent to think much about it. Rose curled up, pressed to my bare chest. She was peaceful, her cheek was cooler against the back of my hand and the heat coming off her torso slowly leveled out as we lay there, half sleeping.

My eyes opened near dawn and I heard her snore softly. Her weight was completely surrendered in my arms: head tucked in that slope between my shoulder and pectoral muscle, her arm slung across my middle and the softest, most thrilling sensation of a breast pressed up against me. She was so full and juicy with a delicious bit of give when I shifted slightly.

It would be so easy. So simple to let a hand wander. I was absolutely rigid inside my trousers, which was shocking given the exhaustion of the night. But I suppose it was also a somewhat comforting indicator of my returning health. 

_ Don’t be that man anymore: the shifty sneak. _

Sighing, I laid back and felt the prickle of morning mountain air on my bare skin. Dawn was full of new mercies.

The air was thick as peach bourbon.

A fan of thick ostrich plumes was her weapon. She wielded it gracefully, both against the southern humidity and in her conquests of flirtation.

Rosamond Tico was sixteen and stepping onto the shores of womanhood like Aphrodite arriving from the sea. As if to invoke this very image, she wore a pale blue gown, spilling with frothy curtains of white silk and lace like a spray of sea foam parting at her feet. Lace swept about her bare shoulders and met in the middle of her bust, her skin shining and radiant like the goddess of love. The jewelry about her ears, her throat, and strung up in her Grecian-styled hair was, perhaps, a little obvious: pearls.

Candles lit most of the room in a dreamy, honey-sweet glow from the heavy candelabras to the four enormous crystal chandeliers hanging from the elaborate crown-molded ceiling. Huge, rounded windows lined the far wall of the ballroom where tables stood, swathed with flowers and refreshments.

The dance floor was filled with decadent, swishing hoop skirts and men in uniform.

She frowned.

_Both gray and blue?_

The orchestral ensemble struck up a light Schottische and Rose looked down at her dance card. The thick paper was decorated with little whorls and flowers printed along the edge.

On every line was her fiancé’s name.

Her brow creased, that wasn’t the custom. It was considered poor taste for engaged persons to dance with one another much —if at all.

Where was he?

“Miss Tico?” Came a voice, soft and warm like cinnamon sugar.

“Oh, I’m afraid I…” She looked up.

Her eyes were met with bright green, fierce as the Arkansas sky before a tornado.

His uniform was brushed gray wool: double breasted with shining brass buttons and a thick brown belt encircling that trim waist. A long saber was hanging at his side and his shoulders were decorated with the golden epaulets of a general.

She had never seen him so clean. His fiery red hair was combed and set neatly down the back of his neck so it nearly touched the edge of his turned-up collar. For his relative slimness, the crisp white cravat seemed to highlight the proud, lithe width of where his neck met his solid jaw. If most men were bears, he was a stag: graceful but no less potent.

As she caught up her breath she mentally switched goddesses; she wasn’t Aphrodite but Artemis: hunted by men for her captivating beauty, only to be won by the silent king of the forest.

“May I have the honor of dancing with you, Miss Tico?”

He stood at a distance from her, properly bent and holding out a gloved hand toward her.

“Forgive me general,” she said. “I only dance with yankees.” She moved aside her fan so he could see the Union Army blue fabric corsage pinned to her bodice.

His eye drifted to her lovely décolletage and then back to her face.

“I’m not a rebel, Miss Tico,” he said in a low voice. “Not anymore.”

Her hand slipped into his without her commanding it. He lead her onto the lacquered dance floor with quiet dignity, his every movement an organic elegance that made the pomp and bluster of the music seem silly. Indeed, the further he guided her on his sturdy pine-bough arm through the promenade, the more the crystal and gold around them looked garish, even false.

When the steps of the Schottische changed, his eye caught hers and he planted a hand on her hip with a touch that ran straight to the primal bits of her womanhood. Not just the sensitive leaves of pleasure, but the deep carnal roots. He spun her around the dance floor, in time with the music but not consequentially —he moved her with the pulse of the earth, the beating rhythm of living, growing things.

The Schottische had many variations, but he would not let go of her waist. It made her quim storm with lightning, thunder and rain. It made her viscera burn like a doe coming into heat. She wanted his hands everywhere on her, drawing out the woman of vibrant spring.

They were moving so quickly, his breath came fast on her neck.

“Rosie?”

They stopped short.

Her fiancé stood before her, his arms extended.

She hesitated, feeling the whisk of a shadow leave her side.

The ginger general was gone.

“Rosie!” Her intended scooped her up and swung her in the air.

“There you are!” She flushed with happiness.

“I have missed you so much!” he laughed. 

“Careful, my dress!” She was sailing above his head.

“You don’t have to be careful anymore, Rosie.” He pulled her close with a wide smile. “You’re free to build on all that knowledge and skill you learned in secret, I really do need your help with the mechanics of the gold mine!”

“Truly?” The sincere question clawed at her voice. “You didn’t just say it to flatter me?”

“Absolutely.” He beamed. “You’re an engineer, Rosie. Your father knew it but he was too hampered by convention; I know it, and now all of California is going to know your name when we build the next Cerro Gordo!”

Her heart raced, in his arms she could fly. She was going to truly _be_ somebody.

His lips, electric and free, closed around her mouth and she was in the stratosphere, rocketing above the cirrus and cumulus. Her adrenaline soared with passion and hope.

When she opened her eyes she saw among the dancing crowd the flash of a familiar face.

Her heart stopped.

“Wait for me?” She scanned her fiancé's face.

“I’m always waiting for you, Rosie.” He smiled.

She let go of his arms and ran into the crowd.

Her eye snatched at the glimpse of black hair and she hustled toward it, lifting her cumbersome skirts and crinolines.

The girl was dressed in a child’s sleeping gown and evening robe.

Rose scurried to catch up to her, she abandoned her ballroom manners and shoved aside another woman to catch the girl rounding the corner ahead of her.

“Paige!” she shouted. “Paige, wait!”

Rose sprinted around the corner and grasped at the hem of the evening robe.

“What is it, Rose?”

The girl was standing, facing her. Her inky black hair was braided up in a neat plait that draped over her shoulder. A pert little nose just like Rose’s wrinkled in familiar annoyance at her sister.

“Paige,” Rose puffed, out of breath. “I need your help. I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh Rose.” Paige cupped her sister’s cheek. “You don’t even know how lucky you are.” She clucked affectionately.

“I don’t feel lucky.” Tears were pouring down Rose’s face. “I feel so lost my stomach is tied up in knots.”

“What do you want, Rose?” Paige’s brow furrowed.

“I…”

“Do you know what you want?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Oh dear.” Paige looked up at a ray of dawn creeping through the big windows. “I have to go.”

“Wait, Paige!” Rose cried. “Please don’t go!”

“Goodbye, Rose.” She smiled sadly.

“No, please!”

Rose stumbled forward into empty nothing.

“Paige, wait!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Jesse" is a slang word for hell.
> 
> A Schottische is a Scandinavian folk dance that got popular at the height of the ballroom dancing era in the late 1850s. It involves very light, hopping steps.
> 
> Here is an example of music that would have been played during a Schottische. This particular piece comes from a collection of music specifically for balls like this one published in 1856 called "The Social Orchestra." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v_M6LT5bdk
> 
> Cerro Gordo is a silver mine that was operating around that time in a town 25 miles south of Bishop Creek called Lone Pine. The mine was so lucrative that it basically bankrolled LA's economic development during the mid 1860s. Crazy, huh? Thanks @huluppu for alerting me to this historical treasure, I'll reference Cerro Gordo in more detail in the future.
> 
> Did I throw you off with the fever dream?? Who else is feeling pretty hot for the silent king of the forest????
> 
> Were my puking descriptions so gross that you actually tossed your cookies? Leave a barf-shaped comment below.


	8. The Blayney Meadow Hot Springs

_But we had the society of these bright streams -dazzlingly clear, as is their wont, splashing from the wheels in diamonds, and striking a lively coolness through the sunshine. And what with the innumerable variety of greens, the masses of foliage tossing in the breeze, the glimpses of distance, the descents into seemingly impenetrable thickets, the continual dodging of the road which made haste to plunge again into the covert, we had a fine sense of woods, and spring-time, and the open air._

—Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Silverado Squatters"

I never used to dream.

Before recently, I think my last dream happened somewhere between my twelfth or thirteenth year. Come to think of it, I think I stopped dreaming after the day I knocked over a tray of whiskey tumblers in my father’s study.

He was madder than hell.

The eyes of the men sitting around, smoking cigars bored into me.

A snaking column of whiskey darted out across the waxed oak floor, my shaking hand caught on a shard of glass as I scraped up the mess. Red dripped into the clear gold liquid.

The feeling of his knuckles on my cheek still hits me when I think I’ve done something wrong. 

The mind has a way of cutting and trimming, like a tailor trying to make the best use of your tattered ego. My mind stitched up an armor that could protect me from hurt; dreams were one of the first things to hit the cutting room floor.

However, the last few nights I began to see images in my sleep. Moments. A match illuminated in the dark for a few seconds before it goes out.

I woke up to the sound of rain hitting the cedar shingles of the roof.

“I dreamed about my sister.” 

Her voice was soft but clear, uncluttered by sleep like she had been awake for some time.

“Hmm?” I turned toward her groggily. “You have a sister?” 

“She died when I was eight.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Consumption.”

“Shame.”

“I miss her.”

I stared up at the cedar panels I had cut and tacked up to line the inside of my cabin’s roof. The patter of water was soothing, I thought it was fortunate that the day had been so gray, since we had slept through most of it.

Had it been just me, I most likely would have stayed sprawled out by the creek to sleep off the food poisoning.

But it wasn’t just me.

Rose lay next to me on the pile of furs that covered my bed. She curled up along my side. Her neck was clammy against my arm from the night’s misadventures but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Her lashes were opening and closing slowly like hesitant butterfly wings. They brushed the sensitive, pale skin of my inner arm.

“What was it about?” I asked.

“What?” 

“The dream, with your sister.” 

“Oh.” Color rose in her cheeks. “I was trying to ask for advice about a dilemma, but she didn’t have time to answer me.” 

Rose’s mouth twisted to one side. She was suddenly pensive, looking off toward the empty fireplace as if watching a memory unfold again.

“How do you feel?” I asked after several moments of quiet.

“Weak,” she confessed. “But better. Thank you for forcing me to eat that hardtack this morning, my insides feel much settled now.” Her smile was a coy admission of defeat.

“Poor food for San Francisco royalty but not bad for a sore stomach.” I smirked, taking my win graciously.

“Sorry I fought back.” She wrinkled her nose. “I thought it would just come back up.” 

“I told you a little food would make you feel better.” I grinned. “You nearly made me pin you down and stuff it in your mouth.”

“You wouldn’t have!” Her eyes flashed.

“I would!” The smile faded from my lips.

“I’ll do anything in my power to make sure you’re alright.” 

I could tell a look or a feeling was escaping from my face —the kind of thing I usually tried to hide, but the rush of emotion was too powerful for me to dam up and cover. 

The slightest movement of her brown eyes upward into mine: that’s what propelled us suddenly onto thin ice. 

Like an object skidding to the center of a frozen pond, we found ourselves lying on a surface that barely covered our intentions. 

Last winter John Charlie and I had gone out onto the solid plane of Florence Lake. We had pushed aside the snow dusting the glassy surface, revealing the world underneath: fat trout darting about like obscured shadows below that icy window.

That was the exact feeling I had laying with her body next to mine, our eyes locked, our breath coming short. Waters roared just below that frozen moment, thoughts and impulses darted about beneath the surface.

Her lips parted, eyes aching. My heart pounded in my throat. Every second we lay suspended it became clearer what we both wanted, and yet the more time passed, the more frozen I became.

Moments slipped by and the thought occurred to me that perhaps we were both waiting for the other person to crack.

Why wasn’t I cracking? Was I really so numb? Was the ice around my heart that thick?

Why didn’t she make a move?

_ She knows it’s wrong to betray her fiancé. And you should know that too, traitor. _

The thought was like a shove back onto solid ground and I sat up quickly.

“I should check on the cows.”

“Oh.” She lifted her head, her brows drawn together in a question she wouldn’t ask with her lips.

“I’ve left them for too long,” I said gruffly, hauling on my boots.

I stood and snatched a shirt off the peg by the door and pulled it over my head. With a brusque air I searched around for my hat before remembering that it had fallen off my head somewhere by the creek.

“Hux?” Her voice was hopeful, I stopped dead in my surly tracks. “Do you have any soap?” she asked unassumingly. “I ought to wash down at the creek.”

I paused. The creek was so cold. I felt wretched letting her subject her weakened little body to that icy water, especially when I knew of an alternative.

_ Don’t tell her about it. You’ll be right back out on that thin ice if you take her there. _

My hand dropped from the handle of the door.

_ Don’t look at her, or you’ll give in. _

“Soap’s in the crate under the table.” I stared down at my boots.

“I promise I won’t use much,” she said.

My eyes drifted up.

Diffused grey light illuminated her dewy brown skin; her hair hung in wild crimps with a stray pine needle or two. Her brown eyes danced —no, teased. Undeniably pushing me.

I sighed. 

  
  


“How long have I been here, five days?” Rose said scoldingly. “And you’ve only just thought to tell me there is a lovely hot spring on the other side of this meadow?”

“Miss Tico, I have made every effort to get you off this mountain for nearly a week —your bathing arrangements were hardly a pressing consideration,” I said, my voice edged with sarcasm.

“Rude,” she glowered quietly.

We walked through the knee high grass across the meadow, the blades of rye, vetch and trefoil swayed, each blade bejeweled with brilliant droplets. Swaths of blooming coreopsis painted purple streaks across the field. A demure, shaded sun peeped out behind partial clouds which aided the mountain’s vacuous dryness in absorbing the rainfall.

With Rose’s garments still strewn back at calf camp, I had shoved my grey wool greatcoat at her and mumbled something about proper coverage and decency. My southern breeding was entirely incongruous with her liberated, possibly Californian manners. It was a stupid double standard, of course; I was no longer a gentleman, so putting on airs would be little more than a charade for me now. But I expected better from her.

Rose wandered freely ahead of me, the greatcoat wrapped around her just below her knees, the hem of her shift poking out. She didn’t seem to care anymore if I saw her legs —truly a Victorian albatross. Her hands reached over the tops of the grass, flinging diamonds of water droplets behind her like one of Virgil or Shakespeare’s forest sprites. With her shining ebony hair tumbling down her backt, I thought she made an apt nymph or dryad.

Her similarity to a forest spirit only gave me more dread about taking her to bathe. In Greek literature, the lonely man who encounters a bathing or dancing nymph invariably succumbs to affliction: muteness, madness or insatiable lust that drives him to death. I had nearly driven myself to insanity earlier and I was determined to resist her charms, to hold strong against her ephemeral magic. Already, with her sumptuous legs appearing in and out of the tall grass, I was failing. 

_ Damn. _

I had the frequent habit of going to the hot springs on the south western side of Blayney Meadow, sometimes twice in a day. But I was unprepared for how it would feel to climb through the fragrant grass and coreopsis blossoms and stand before that wide pool of clear, steaming water with a beautiful demigoddess at my side. 

“It’s breathtaking,” she whispered.

The corners of my lips perked slightly. The 8’ by 10’ pool was fed from a crack in the bedrock of the mountain which pumped thousands of gallons of hot, mineralized water into a series of ponds on this end of the valley. Some pools mixed with cool water springs, making for several temperatures of water to choose from. I typically started with this medium-hot pond and then, if I was particularly worn and achy, scrambled up over the bank into the hotter pool.

My heart lurched when she started to shed the wool greatcoat.

“I’ll be over in the warm lake,” I said hurriedly. “It's only a few dozen paces toward the trees over there.” I pointed to a giant pond which had the coolest mixture of cold and hot spring water.

“Alright, she said, her eyes soft and beguiling. I grit my teeth, steeling myself.

I don’t remember what reply I growled at her, but the next thing I knew, I was running toward the warm lake, tearing off my calico shirt and leaping out of my stiff trousers to throw my sweaty body in the tepid-cool water. With a great, heaving splash I plunged into the pool and kicked off the bottom. When my head broke through the surface, flapping wings startled off into the brush. I shook my dripping, red locks, flinging beads of water away from my face.

The middle of the warm lake was deeper than my head. Treading to keep my neck above the surface, I could feel the layers of mixing water: my legs beat against the frigid snowmelt at the bottom while my chest and arms met the warmer spring water. It was more pleasant to float on my back in the warmest layer. 

Grime and sweat washed away, but the insistent longing between my legs did not. Closing my eyes, my hand found my desperate member inside my soaking drawers and began to work out the tension. I never felt anything but wickedness for handling my needs this way, and yet at that moment I thought it a pragmatic defense against a much greater transgression.

“Hux?”

_ Christ, woman! Not now! _

I shriveled back from the edge of my own release and I splashed underwater with an angry start.

“Hux!” The fear in her voice chilled my heat and irritation. I scrambled out of the warm lake and ran to the hot pool.

Bursting through the brush and grass, I found a bobcat standing on the other edge of the spring. The sound of me crashing through the bushes startled him, he turned tail and loped back into the trees on his big paws.

Rose cowered against the back side of the pool, neck deep in water. Thank God her shift was still on. It floated about her body like a ghost: a thin waif of clothing.

“Jesus, don’t scare me like that!” I snapped.

“I didn’t know what to do!” she gasped.

“A bobcat won’t hurt you if you mind your own business.”

“How was I supposed to know that?” Rose retorted.

“Maybe if you’d stop bothering everybody you’d learn something!” 

“And that’s what I am to you, isn’t it?” She rose up with a great slosh of water, huffing angrily at me. “Nothing but a bother?”

She pushed me. 

Her hands burned like hot irons against the skin of my chest and I started to lose my footing on the rocky bottom of the spring. Without thinking, I reached out and grasped her shoulder. She too had instinctively seized my other arm to keep me from falling. The heat from her hand and shoulder ignited my veins.

A strangled sound came out of my mouth. Her eyes were deep and sparkling with bewitchment. Slowly, she pulled my arm down until my shaking hand planted on her wet, dripping waist.

“Rose.” The name escaped my lips.

With a rush of water I swept her up in my arms. Her legs wrapped around my waist, searing with heat from the spring or from the power of her touch on my body. I held the thick flesh of her arse as she clung to my face. She leaned down and seared my lips with a kiss that shook my soul loose from my bones. I was bound by her enchantment: glad to suffer muteness, madness, and death if only she would kiss me again and again.

Her lips were red on my ears, eyes and neck. I faded back against the rocks so that she was sitting in my lap and my hands were free to discover the planes of her body. 

They were nothing short of holy.

I traced the thrilling cushioned roundness of her arse up to those intoxicating hips. Slowly, reverently, I followed the gentle softness of her middle up toward her chest, my hesitance paced each inch as a question and she answered with sweet little murmurs and yeses.

She gasped against my neck when my hand found the valley between her breasts. She lifted her head and poured a look of beatification on me as my touch climbed surely upward over the hem of her soaking shift to the bare, delicate golden skin of her collarbone. A slight smile played at her features as she untied the string suspending the neckline of her shift. My mortality hammered in my chest, surely I would die to look upon her.

“Oh, Rose!” 

She was immeasurably lovely. Her breasts were more sumptuous than the Grecian statues, which suited the woman who’s kindness eclipsed those teasing goddesses. I helped her move aside the fabric on her shoulders so that her shift floated in the water around her waist. To me her figure was an improvement on the Greek ideal: more generous, softer and infinitely giving. Absolutely perfect, absolute divinity.

I swear my vision dimmed as my hands closed around those lovely breasts, I made a primal sound that caused her to throw her head back. Surely my heart would not sustain this pace.

“Look at me,” she whispered, her eyes incomparably soft. “I want this, don’t look away.”

I could feel the weight of her command deep, but I could not find any words in reply. My hardened length started to stir. She wanted me, she wanted this. 

I was prepared to bare myself with perfect obedience when the sound of heavy boots crashing in the bracken sent a wave of shock between us.

Wildly, we scrambled apart.

Rose hiked her shift back up and plunged neck deep into a dark corner of the pool while I ducked under the water to hide my drawers full of obvious, desperate cock.

A white ten gallon hat appeared over the fringe of grasses, followed by a familiar face now twisted in a jeering smile.

_ Blame it to goddamn Jesse. _

My throat started to vibrate with an irritated groan.

Upon seeing me crouching in the water, the dusty vaquero with ruddy brown skin and mischievous black curls stopped short.

"Dios mio!" His mouth dropped open, looking from Rose to me.

“Hey Finn!” The man’s face spread with an enormous, mocking grin. “Looks like Hugs got himself a lady!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to @BrownGirlDreams for discussing head canons on Hux's mother and father and their dynamic. This also kind of connects to the metaphor in the Nuumu origin story, the good couple is taught by the woman, and the bad by the man. Hux's deepest flaws come from emulating his father and disassociating from his mother. We were talking about how Hux's way to redemption (both in canon and in this fic) are most deeply rooted in re-connecting with his mother’s qualities.
> 
> Consumption was used to describe lots of diseases that we now know to be different ones, among them cancer and tuberculosis. :(
> 
> You guyyyys this was my first smut scene in 1st person! What worked? What can I work on for when it finally comes time for these kids to totally seal the deal??


	9. Rose Makes Me Play the Fiddle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks you guys for all the love!
> 
> Thanks especially to the lovely and brilliant @ElfMaidenofLight for being a genius beta, and for knowing the GingerRose & StormPilot dynamics so well!!

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Hugs.” Poe Damerón grinned triumphantly at me. “And Mrs. Hugs, I presume!” He swept off his white felted hat and folded into an elaborate bow.

“She’s not my wife,” I retorted defensively. 

“Realmente, I didn’t see you settling down with anyone.” Damerón continued, pretending not to hear me.

I raised my voice. “She is engaged to the mine owner in Bishop Creek Canyon.”

“Nope, never saw you with a female of any kind.” He put his hand on one side of his mouth. “I always assumed you had the clap!” 

“Damerón!” I snarled. “Stop tooling with me and behave respectfully around a lady!”

“Forgive me, miss,” Damerón said, collecting some level of manners. He nodded at Rose.

Rose and I were all but naked, still flushed and breathing heavily as if to bear witness to our activities a moment ago. Yet I still found myself introducing her to Damerón in my old habit, as if we were standing in a fine parlor or ballroom.

“May I present Miss Rosamond Tico of San Francisco,” I said stupidly.

Rose looked completely horrified, her arms folded tight across her chest. She smiled weakly from above the surface of the water.

“Miss Tico,” I said formally, my voice wavering as if to make my manners even more out of place. “This is Poe Damerón, his father owns Rancho Damerón in Owens Valley.” 

When my eyes met hers a look incredulity washed across her face.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” She tipped her head politely at Poe. The darkness of the bank shading the water below her neck was not enough coverage to eliminate the awkwardness of the moment.

I stood up, curtains of water streaming from my pale body and drawers. I resisted looking at Rose while I marched across the pond, yet as I climbed onto the bank next to Damerón, I sneaked a glance and found her covering her eyes. I wondered if her modesty was for Poe’s sake, or if she, like me, was making every effort to cool the blazing instincts of passion.

“Come!” I said tersely, grasping Damerón’s arm. I lead a wolfishly grinning Poe back through the grass away from the hot pool.

He gave my sad flannel undergarment a taunting look.

“¡Qué calzones tan feos!”

“That was completely unacceptable!” I growled, motioning back towards the pools

“So, she’s engaged to someone else, huh? It sure seems like you two were enjoying one hell of a bath.” Damerón said, choking back laughter.

“Would you shut your gob!” I snapped.

“Hey, I’ll keep quiet, Hugs, but that mine owner isn’t the kind of guy you should mess around with.” 

I squinted at him. His bushy dark eyebrows were raised; his mirth had diminished. Slightly.

“What the devil are you doing here, Damerón?” I demanded. Finding my trousers, I struggled into them.

“Don’t get your dander up.” Poe raised his hands defensively. “Finn and I just figured you would be done with calving by now and ready to brand.”

“My herd is late,” I sighed. “They’ve only just finished calving this week.”

“We could always just brand the ones that are ready.”

“That would be completely inefficient!” I hissed.

“What’s completely inefficient?” Rose crept up behind me, wrapped in my greatcoat. She had also found my shirt and wore it with the sleeves tied around her waist like an ankle-length skirt. It was oddly comforting that she felt shy about showing her legs to anyone but me. I felt the spark returning as I thought about those legs wrapped around my body.

Rose hovered beside me, her arm brushing against mine, our bodies still burning to be near one another.

“Mr. Hugs here has part of Rancho Damerón’s stock,” Poe explained.

“Hugs?” Rose shot me an amused glance. “I wasn’t aware you worked for somebody else,” she said to me.

“Unfortunately, my employer is this numbskull’s father,” I said, my voice laced with irritation. “Although Señor Damerón has the sense to allow me the discretion of raising the cattle as I see fit.”

“That’s right.” Poe folded his arms reprovingly. “And while Hugs is up gallivanting in the mountains, me and the boys got the calving and branding done in the valley weeks ago.”

“And yet my herd has a quarter of the calving losses as yours,” I rebutted. “They’re hardier, healthier and achieve the same market weight as your weak valley calves.”

Rose’s eyes widened, she seemed surprised to hear this much vitriol from me. Surprised and very entertained.

“But it looks like you’re not going to reach market weight in time this year, Hugs, so I’m finally gonna get the bigger weigh-out,” Poe preened. “I’ll be taking your belt buckle.”

“Nobody said anything about wagering my belt buckle, you child,” I scoffed.

“I know, but it seems appropriate.”

“Nothing is appropriate about your untoward arrival and intrusion on this meadow!” I steamed, my face reddening.

The bushes rustled and out stepped a tall, sturdy Black man, buckling up a dusty pair of trousers and chaps. His shirt draped carelessly around his shining dark shoulders that still steamed with hot spring water. 

“Gentlemen,” the man said, “I see you two have wasted no time trading insults.” 

“Finn!” Poe grinned. “Mr. Hugs just agreed to fix us supper!”

“What? I…” I stammered.

I heard Rose giggle.

Damerón turned to me with an off-handed look. “Be sure to have the vittles ready by the time I’m finished soaking in the hot springs! ¡ Prefiero el bistec poco hecho! ” He grinned.

Cackling wildly, Poe Damerón disappeared into the tall grass toward the hot pool.

I was left with my fists balled, grumbling under my breath. “Cocky miscreant son of a.. .”

“Well, hello!” Finn looked startled like he had just taken notice of Rose. He quickly pulled his checked calico shirt over his head and buttoned it up discreetly.

I introduced Finn and Rose with the last remaining dregs of my politeness, which already came in limited quantities. 

We made our way back to calf camp, which had been mercifully cleansed by the day’s rain. Unfortunately, when I located my hat by the creek I found it turned up and half full of water. I let out a string of oaths and shook it out, reshaping the top with my hands.

Finn had already gathered kindling and was coaxing the fire when I got back to the ring of pines. Rose sat on a log next to a neatly folded stack of her clothes. When she caught me looking at her laundry, her coy smile told me that my face must have reacted with great scandal. I felt myself harden in my trousers to think of her throwing aside her clothes haphazardly in my camp.

To his credit, Finn pretended to ignore Rose when she casually slipped away and returned wearing my shirt with the sleeves folded up, its length tucked flatteringly into her skirt. My cheeks burned with absurd delight to think of her soft skin against a garment of mine.

Unwrapping a long sirloin of bright, glistening raw veal, Finn cut the meat against the grain into small pieces. The cast iron skillet was hot on the embers when he threw the chunks in, sizzling with a delicious, caramelized aroma. He expertly tossed the fresh meat in the pan to sear all the sides. After they had been perfectly browned, he tipped out a healthy glug of whiskey from his flask. The pan smoked and sizzled dramatically.

“That looks delicious, Finn!” Rose exclaimed.

“Won’t the whiskey just burn off?” I asked out of curiosity. 

“‘Won’t get drunk off of beef,” Finn chuffed. “Makes the juices thicker.”

I murmured appreciatively. Attention to detail was something I found most agreeable in a man I was forced to work with.

Blustering, big-mouthed arrogance was something I found most  _ dis _ agreeable. Minutes later, Poe strutted into calf camp and arrayed himself by the fire, dabbing his curls with the attentiveness of primping peacock. I rolled my eyes.

“Hey, smells good, Hugs. Whatchya got cooking there?”

“Beans and veal,” I answered, “but don’t thank me, your partner made it.” I gestured to Finn, who had settled opposite of me and Rose by the fire.

“Much obliged, Finn.” Looking at the Black cowboy, Poe’s expression suddenly seized with a tenderness that I hadn’t noticed before. I couldn’t resist pressing.

“It’s you and Finn up here until the drive, then? Alone?” I asked. The way Damerón’s face twitched told me that I’d hit on something.

“We got Newby too,” Poe said quickly. “He’s up at Double Meadow now.”

Finn chuckled, “That man’s gums can flap faster than a herd of geese headed south. We try to lose him when we can.” 

Oddly, Poe blushed and shot Finn a warning look. He coughed, pulled out his own flask of hard alcohol and shoved it to his lips, silencing himself. I was refreshed to see the man too embarrassed to command language for once.

Poe quickly got a hold of himself and subverted my own drifting, lovestruck eye.

“Miss Tico, Hux says you got a sweetheart in Bishop Creek.” Damn he was good.

“Yes.” Rose looked flustered. “He’s been a part-owner at Cerro Gordo the last few years and now he’s opening up a new mine on his gold claim in Bishop Creek Canyon. Perhaps, you know him?” 

“I know him.” Poe nodded. “He and Belshaw threw one hell of a horse race at Cerro Gordo last year.”

“Let me guess,” I huffed, “You won.”

“You’re darn right I won! ‘Scusing my language, Miss Tico.”

“Poe’s the fastest rider in the Sierras!” Finn beamed proudly. Damerón’s flush of pleasure was impossible to miss, but he quickly diverted to a description of the event. He was not one for modesty.

“See, the track was out on the mesa below Cerro Gordo, and they looped the track around the draw before scaling up the sand dunes back into town!” Poe said excitedly. “Now, I wasn’t riding Midnight at the time because he had a case of lameness, so I raced with a bay Thoroughbred my father bought in Carson City. Damn, she was fast!” 

My mind wandered as Poe regaled the group with his exceptionally dull horse race story. Rose seemed interested enough, or perhaps she was simply too kind. I loved the way her lips parted and eyes danced as Damerón described his exaggerated obstacles and inevitable victory despite all odds. She was sweet to humor such a pompous braggart.

Our hands were inches apart on the log where we were sitting. As Poe’s story grew more preposterous and fictional, the impulse to touch became more real and less imaginary. Soon, her smallest finger was discreetly resting on top of mine, sending shocks of hot blood through my body. The moment Rose spied Finn looking, however, she pulled her hand away.

Poe was still talking when I dished up the stew for everybody, serving it with a piece of hardtack.

“You can use the tin plate and fork first, Miss Tico,” I said quietly, handing her the only utensils I had down at calf camp. “I’ll eat after.”

“I’d rather share, if you don’t mind,” Rose said. “I’m not sure I can eat a whole serving after last night and I’d rather not make you wait. I eat slowly.” She took a bite of stew and then handed me back the tin cup and spoon. 

“Suit yourself,” I said, smiling inwardly. My mouth closed over the spoon, still warm from her lips. A shiver ran up my spine. Damerón gave me enough eyebrow to tell me he noticed, but he was too deep into another racing story to bother with commenting.

The slow exchange of food between myself and Rose occupied my imagination enough to make it my first truly pleasant meal in the company of Rancho Damerón’s heir. I was practically smiling and nodding along with his insipid tales by the time supper was finished. 

Dark had crept over the valley, but the air was warm around us and smelled like pine.

“Well, Finn,” Poe set aside his enamelware and stretched his legs. “Should I go get the banjo?”

“Oh yes, please!” Rose said.

“Jesus, no!” I moaned.

“Come on, Hugs,” Damerón cajoled. “‘Been practicing my claw hammer!”

“And here I was, thinking you played the guitar,” I said weakly, sincerely hoping I could somehow persuade him not to produce a banjo.

Poe smiled accommodatingly.

“Trajo eso también.”

“Christ,” I grumbled.

Finn and Poe got up and went to the round pen where they had removed the pack from their mule.

“I don’t mind banjos.” Rose poked me in the ribs with a flirtatious smile.

“Then you have worse taste than I thought, Possum.” I smiled teasingly down at her. “I should have assumed as much, based on your willingness to spend time with me.”

“You shouldn’t talk that way about yourself,” she whispered. 

Seizing upon our momentary aloneness by the campfire, Rose sank toward me and closed her lips on my neck with a soft little kiss. My insides caught fire again. I slipped my arm around her waist; our faces were only a breath away from scorching contact when I heard boots crashing through the twigs and pine needles.

Finn and Poe stepped back into the ring of light with the sound of their instrument ringing slightly with their steps. Poe indeed had an old Caribbean-style fretless banjo like the ones I had seen throughout the war.

“Here, Hugs. Catch!” Damerón threw a dark stringed object at me which barked alarmingly when it hit my hands. 

“I don’t play this,” I snarled.

“It’s Newby’s. Do what you want with it.”

“Oh, please play it!” Rose begged. “It can't be much different than a cello!”

A reverberation of annoyance rumbled in my chest, but looking down at the instrument, I was curious. It was a fiddle, different from a violin in that the bridge was larger and placed higher. Newby’s unfortunate instrument had taken a beating getting up into the mountains, but was still functional.

“It’s really not like a cello, Miss Tico,” I corrected. “The strings are tuned differently.”

“I never knew you to back down from a challenge,” she said.

In fact I had attempted the violin some during my musical studies and roughly knew the way of it. I tucked the instrument under my chin and casually bounced the bow on the strings with a bright, squeaky chirp. A bit of tuning and it didn’t sound half bad.

“You got perfect pitch, Hux? Like those fancy philharmonics?” Finn squinted as I tuned the fiddle.

“I do.” 

“At least he thinks he does,” Poe snorted. “Give me an A, Hugs, and we’ll all pretend you’re right.”

I let Damerón’s insult slide since I appreciated his effort to get all the instruments in tune together. 

Finn picked a nondescript series of riffs on his guitar as we finished tuning and warming up. He had a jangling, energetic strum, and his fingers absently flew across the strings in a G run that told me he knew his way around a bluegrass guitar. His hammer-ons and licks had the bluesy sorrow of the Deep South; the mournful familiarity turned my skin turn to goose-pimples. 

“I’m thinking ‘Old Joe Clark’,” Poe announced.

“Oh come now, that’s a fiddle tune,” I argued. “Let me at least find my bearings.”

Poe made a scornful face. “Listen to this hack, ‘I’m trained by a professional musician’ he says!” Damerón scoffed. “Prove it!”

“Yes, Hux!” Rose chided. “I didn’t come all the way up this mountain for you to leave me hanging.”

The suggestiveness of her tone and her luring look made my lap twitch. 

“Fine!” I said, giving her a resigned little smirk.

The opening walk-up squealed badly from the fiddle, but after that, the first line of melody was acceptable. A few bars in and I was already adding slides with proper bluegrass twang. The style was familiar to me; if I joined in with my soldiers at camp, I typically picked up the upright bass, since it’s practically built like an oversized cello. Instruments that took solos usually didn’t suit me in a setting like that anyhow. Which is why the fiddle, though suitably executed in that moment, was more a source of panic than amusement with Miss Tico’s eyes on me.

And yet. She was smiling, no —glowing with admiration and humor. 

Perhaps it wasn’t so terrible.

After I had sawed out the opening melody, Poe and Finn belted out the first verse.

_ Old Joe Clark's a fine old man _

_ Tell you the reason why _

_ He keeps good liquor 'round his house _

_ Good old Rock and Rye _

_ Fair thee well, Old Joe Clark _

_ Fair thee well I say _

_ Fair thee well, Old Joe Clark _

_ I ain’t got long to stay _

Rose laughed and tipped back my flask of whiskey. By the time they’d hit verse three I felt like I was really getting a handle on the fiddle. The stylization wasn’t the crisp perfection of Mozart or Bach, but it had its own elegance, with the precise sixteenth notes played with just the right accuracy to produce a lackadaisical ease. Playing like a hillbilly actually required considerable finesse. 

_ Old Joe Clark had a house _

_ Fifteen stories high _

_ And every story in that house _

_ Was filled with chicken pie _

__

_ I went down to Old Joe's house _

_ He invited me to supper _

_ I stumped my toe on the table leg _

_ And stuck my nose in the butter _

__

_ Sixteen horses in my team _

_ The leaders they are blind _

_ And every time the sun goes down _

_ There's a pretty girl on my mind _

__

_ Eighteen miles of mountain road _

_ And fifteen miles of sand _

_ If ever travel this road again _

_ I'll be a married man _

By the time we hit the ending of the song with a ‘shave and a haircut, two bits,’ my shirt stuck to my back with sweat. 

“That was marvelous!” Rose clapped her hands.

“Hey, you’re not bad on that fiddle, Hugs,” Poe admitted. He started scolding Finn about one of the verse lyrics when Finn interrupted.

“Let’s have you sing something, Miss Tico!”

“Oh, mercy no!” Rose scowled.

“Now, there must be lots of music in San Francisco, Miss Tico!” Poe prodded, pouring the whiskey into his mouth. I nearly choked on my own dram when Rose sent me a desperate look.

“You really don’t want me to sing, gentlemen, my voice is truly awful.”

Finn smiled winningly. “I’d even hear a church song from you, Miss Tico.”

“How about ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’?” Poe offered. “Or ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken’?”

“Hux, please don’t let them make me!” Rose squeaked, wrinkling her nose.

I was already smiling past my ears and couldn’t resist. 

“Fair’s fair, Rose!” I said with the raise of an eyebrow. “What if I play the melody along with you? Something easy like, ‘I’ll Fly Away’?”

“It looks as though I have no choice. You boys are out of luck now, this will only call in the coyotes!” Rose warned. When at last she was offered no quarter, she straightened up in her seat on the log and nodded at Finn with the resignation of a martyr.

Finn started a nice rolling counterpick on the guitar that spelled out the melody clear as day. It was slow enough to reveal that he was shooting low without patronizing her. He paused with an expectant major seventh chord, waiting for Rose to take it away.

_ Some glad morning when this life is o’er _

_ I’ll fly away _

_ To a land on God’s celestial shore _

_ I’ll fly away _

I bit my tongue.

Her rhythm was fine, it was just that while we were playing in C, Rose was aimlessly wandering in some polytonal mixture of A and G flat. She had no qualms about this, but in a plucky tone sang out the wrong notes without a hint of guile. 

Rose was completely and utterly tone deaf. 

It was the most charming performance I had ever witnessed. 

_ I’ll fly away, oh glory _

_ I’ll fly away _

_ When I die, hallelujah by and by _

_ I’ll fly away _

The chorus rang even farther from the mark and Poe did not think it was charming. His lower lid began to twitch and his mouth hung open, ready to catch flies. Finn kept a better poker face and a small, encouraging smile. 

The sound of Poe’s light accompaniment on the banjo became increasingly pensive and I had not the generosity to resist pushing him over the edge. On the fiddle I found a perfect fourth above Rose’s lost, ambling voice and screeched a whining anti-harmony that made Poe’s nostrils begin to flair. He closed his eyes in a prayer that begged for sweet demise almost as earnestly as the song itself. 

There was another verse to the song but Poe made a very obvious turn in his strumming and plucked out a decisive conclusion to the song. Rose took the hint a little late and swallowed the next line as Finn let his guitar ring out with the final strum.

“Well, thank you, Miss Tico.” Poe smiled in relief.

“Happy to oblige you, sirs.” Rose grinned devilishly.

“Aw it wasn’t that bad,” Finn said.

“It was!” Poe chirped. 

“I admire your spirit, Miss Tico,” I said warmly. She met my gaze with what could only be a full, boisterous laugh that she’d saved just for me, fizzing silently behind those mahogany eyes. My stomach flooded with warmth.

“Now pass me that whiskey!” she exclaimed. 

We drank a considerable amount, playing through several folk tunes, and Poe led us out on a few army camp songs. I knew Damerón hadn’t fought in the war, but it made sense that plenty of the era’s music had made its way west before I did.

“Hux, you know ‘Arkansas Traveller’?” Finn asked me.

I stiffened. “Yes.” 

I hadn’t made it known to my employer, nor his cowhands, where I was originally from.

“Well of course you’d know it, since you’re from Arkansas!” Rose said with the tipsy, unladylike affectation of a fake southern drawl.

I gave her a grim look and pressed my lips together. The smile evaporated from her face.

“Really, Hugs?” Poe laughed blearily through the fog of liquor in his eyes. “You’re from Arrrrr Kansas?”

I said nothing, but started in on the fiddle with the lead of ‘Arkansas Traveler.’ Poe and Finn jumped in but we made a messy, sloppy iteration of the old tune. The aggressive cheeriness of the melody suddenly wore on my nerves. Finn was taking a solo on the guitar when I stopped striking the bow on the dampened strings to the down beat and dropped the fiddle from my chin. 

I rubbed my neck and sank down next to Rose.

“Are you alright?” she whispered, sidling up close to me. Her hand slid comfortingly up my back. It felt like a rush of whiskey to the head.

“Fine,” I said, my nose brushing against her hair. She was still wearing it loose and free around her shoulders.

I took another pull of whiskey. Rose was laughing at Poe, who increased the speed of his claw-hammers to match Finn’s accelerating strumming. Their song drunkenly devolved into dueling banjos. Finn’s shoulders shook as Poe buckled first, losing his pattern with a terrible noise of clattering banjo strings. They collapsed into childish laughter 

“Hey, Hugs,” Poe slurred. “How many banjo players does it take to eat a possum?”

“I don’t know, Damerón,” I scoffed. “How many?”

Poe was already snorting. “One to eat it, and one to watch for the train!” 

I actually let out a rough, crusty-sounding laugh. Finn coughed on his whiskey. Rose wheezed, her shoulders heaving with the absurd sense of humor that comes from an abundance of drink. 

“Finn,” Rose said, her cheeks red. “I have never heard those fancy little slaps and stops you do on the guitar. Where did you learn to play like that?”

“Some boys in the army.” He shrugged offhandedly. 

My chest closed like a vise.

“When did you join up?” Poe asked.

“I enlisted in Massachusetts,” he said. “54th Volunteer Infantry Regiment.” 

“Fredrick Douglass!” Rose said excitedly. “He was a recruiter for your regiment! Did you fight with his sons?”

“I did,” Finn said. “They’re good men, Lewis is a fine guitar player as well.”

“Which battles did you participate in, if you don’t mind me asking?” Poe ventured.

“Less than you might think,” Finn replied. “We was stationed around Charleston, mostly. In our biggest battle we attacked a landing outside Fort Wagner to draw away rebel troops so Grant could take the fort. Saw a few smaller battles after that.”

“I remember reading President Lincoln’s speech after Fort Wagner.” Rose’s face glowed. “What was the name of the sergeant who rescued the flag?”

“Sergeant William Harvey Carney.” Finn’s eyes lit up. “Said he was fixing to be a minister before the war, imagine that! Changed his mind, saying the best way he could serve God was to free the oppressed. Lewis and I could barely pry the flag from his hands when the battle was over.”

“Brave man,” Poe said. He held aloft his flask. “A toast to Sergeant William Harvey Carney!” 

As we drank, Rose shot me a look that asked the obvious question, and I shook my head. Luckily, the Army of Tennessee didn’t engage with the 54th Massachusetts, but that didn’t mean Finn hadn’t heard of me.

In fact, he gave me an oddly calm look that hinted at acid simmering under the surface.

“So,” Finn said, studying me. “Arkansas, huh?”

I tipped back more whiskey.

“Yep.”

“Only heard about one Hux from Arkansas,” He said, his eyes narrowing.

“And who would that be?” I swallowed.

“Brendol Hux.”

The knot in my stomach relaxed some to hear this name instead of the General Hux of the 1st Arkansas Infantry Regiment, although referencing my father was no less a tangle of bitter feelings and memories.

“He’s dead,” I said coldly.

“Good.” 

Finn’s teeth gritted. He flashed me a knowing look full of pain, his expression lanced through my chest like hot lead.

I didn’t understand it, but I recognized that he had just lied: he knew exactly who I was —he’d probably known it all along. Why the hell would he protect my secret after everything I had done?

Poe lifted his whiskey flask in toast.

“To the demise of evil bastards.” 

“I’ll drink to that.” I threw back my liquor.

“Finn.” The note of amorous curiosity in Poe’s voice was even less masked in his current state. “I know you don’t aspire to work for my father forever. What will you do after?”

Finn’s face softened. “I reckon I’ll take my earnings and run a lodge in the mountains above the valley. Maybe Pine Creek or Aspendell. I don’t mind turning bunks, and I take a shine to cooking.” 

“I saw you prepare that veal, Finn,” Rose said. “I think you’re as accomplished a cook as any chef I’ve dined with in San Francisco!”

Finn made a ‘pshaw’ sound.

“Now you’re just being polite, Miss Tico.” 

“Truly, I’m not!” Rose insisted.

Poe leaned toward Finn, his eyes betraying his own secret. “When Rancho Damerón is mine, I’ll build a pack station up in Aspendell and you can build the lodge.” Despite how muddled his consonants sounded by the whiskey, I could tell Poe really meant it.

Finn flashed Poe a smile.

“I’d like that.” 

“Packing mule trains into the mountains is my aim!” Damerón announced. “Certainly beats moldering down in the valley all year with my family in constant uproar, hounding me to get married. Ayyy, no thank you, Tia Maria, your cousin’s daughter is too interested in collecting small dogs for my taste!”

“Poe Damerón married,” I smirked. “How piteous that day will be for whomever you are espoused.”

“Same to you, my good sir.”

He clicked his flask in the air at me in a mocking ¡Salud!.

Rose’s laughter made me feel like our feud was little more than boys scrapping in a schoolyard. Her bright spirit made all ills seem fleeting; less powerful.

“What about you, Hugs?” Poe asked. 

My eyes were still settled on Rose.

“Yes, what is your ambition, Hux?” She echoed with a cheeky smile. “What do you want?”

What did I want? The things that flashed through my mind were pure insanity. I nearly laughed out loud.

I wanted her to wake up beside me on the top of a cliff at Buttermilk. I’d show her how the dawn makes the strangest pink light over the alien shapes of sand-blasted rocks.

I wanted her to read me a passage of Emily Dickenson, curled up under furs by the fire in the dead of winter.

I wanted to listen to her annoying, tuneless humming while she puttered around the house I built her.

I wanted to watch her body change like the moon with my stardust growing inside her.

I wanted to tend to small chores around the homestead, mulling over Walt Whitman in my head while I met the needs of simple creatures. I’d come inside to the smell of bacon and coffee, throw my boots off by the door and find her seated at a big oak table, teaching science to a dozen little gingers with brown eyes.

I wanted to scoop her up and carry her off to the creek, bend her over the bank and claim her, body and soul.

“Quiet,” I replied. “I want quiet.”

“Well, you certainly chose an apt place to get what you want,” Poe snorted.

“I reckon this is the most quiet, beautiful place in the world,” Finn said with no small hint of wonder.

“It’s beautiful alright,” I agreed, before I realized I hadn’t taken my attention off Rose. She was blushing, but her eyes shone with something I didn’t know how to describe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I’m using Damerón with the accent because I spotted Latinx Star Wars fans doing it and felt like it was extra appropriate since we’re set in California. 
> 
> Sorry about the bluegrass stuff, esp. the banjo joke. Totally self indulgent there. I learned bluegrass guitar in high school to get closer to my crush, and well, I got pretty good at guitar but it didn’t end up working out with the guy! (His loss!)
> 
> Fun fact: Arkansas Traveller is the same tune as a children’s song that I bet you know, “I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee…” Here's the tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB3tSSlq130
> 
> After writing this I spent some time learning more about how “old time” bluegrass is the collision of Scotch-Irish folk music and Black American folk music. Banjos were originally from West Africa via the Caribbean, fiddles from the UK, and guitars from Spain. The Civil War ended up being a lightning rod for this genre because musicians were marching all around the country swapping songs and styles.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8kCRylMd0U  
> Here’s an example of old-time bluegrass guitar, you can hear the resonant droning sound and twanging pull-offs which makes this style distinctive. 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4dN3iOZVDQ  
> Here’s a rendition of Old Joe Clark. It’s not a great version but it’s the best one I could find that was fiddle-lead. You also get a feel for how in a casual group, the fiddle just starts and everybody else joins in. Pretty much just whenever they feel like it. 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTNq9s1NmEI  
> This is a claw-hammer banjo, the way they would have played it in the Civil War. It’s different from the rolling sound we hear now, which was invented in the 1940s. 
> 
> And for a deeper dive into Civil War era (and older) music that has persisted to today, here is a video of lil baby Chris Thile from Nickel Creek doing “The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP6JcXwiJpc Now that I think of it, this is the perfect song for Hux’s cute little life aspirations.
> 
> Finally, for no other reason than that I love it, here is my absolute favorite bluegrass recording on the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3larcGfwC0g  
> Nobody knows how old this song is, it has a billion verses, (this version has four) but it wins in my book because resonator guitar genius, Jerry Douglas, does the most ridiculous barn-on-fire intro. Also it’s called, “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn.” How can you not love it already??


	10. We Brand the Calves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back to the Peace of Wild Things, fam. Thanks for your patience while I recovered from my state reopening after COVID-19 and all the business of readjusting to my insane life!!
> 
> Please enjoy this very spicy update that has been beta-ed by our delightful and talented @ElfMaidenOfLight. Please go check out her work, she is fantastic!!

_The flowery wildness of the high steep slope toward Brown's Flat, and its bloom-fragrance descending at the close of the still days. The embowered river-reaches with their multitude of voices making melody, the stately flow and rush and glad exulting onsweeping currents caressing the dipping sedge-leaves and bushes and mossy stones, swirling in pools, dividing against little flowery islands, breaking gray and white here and there, ever rejoicing, yet with deep solemn undertones recalling the ocean, --the brave little bird ever beside them, singing with sweet human tones among the waltzing foam-bells, and like a blessed evangel explaining God's love._

\--John Muir, “My First Summer in the Sierra” published in 1911.

The Chickamunga campaign at the end of 1863 couldn’t have possibly gone worse. 

We lost Tennessee.

During the conflict I would lie awake in my cold, damp tent and imagine that, in fact, I could meet with worse: the bite of a bullet or the obliteration of a cannonball, for example. 

Now that I think of it, death whizzed past me left and right all the damn time. I might have looked brave, but I was simply preoccupied patching up Snoke and Ren’s mistakes. My mind worked overtime worrying about how I was going to keep this army together --I couldn’t bother myself to think about who I was killing. What time did that leave me to consider my own death? 

Part of me wondered if I secretly wished to die. If I took a bullet everything would be all over. All the miserable bullshit of leading the Confederate Army of Tennessee under General Braxton Snoke would cease.

Snoke; what a pompous windbag! 

He favored General Ren and his cavalry over the infantry, wasting my troopers like pawns while he preened over Ren’s meager gains. The 1st Arkansas lost so many men: the dead piled high around the redoubts at Lookout Mountain, their blood emptied onto the streets of Chattanooga. Eventually, the casualties were so high I was forced to combine my home regiment with the 15th Arkansas.

Chattanooga was the “gateway to the west,” when our armies were pushed out of the city into Georgia. It was clear then that Snoke had lost favor with President Jefferson Davis. This was my moment: I had stood out during the Battle of Chattanooga when I held the Confederate right flank at Missionary Ridge. While the rest of the army tucked tail and fled to Georgia in defeat, I held my own against the yanks under General William Tecumsah Sherman. It was my success that protected our retreat. My decisive leadership had ensured that Grant and Sherman didn’t cut off our force and wipe out a whole flank of our army. Surely Jefferson Davis would notice me, or perhaps Robert E. Lee. Hadn’t Lee praised my discipline?

We were at Dalton, Georgia, on December 1st, 1863. I had my regiments at attention outside camp on the edge of the city to reform their ranks. Rumblings of a command change were echoing across the force for some time; the boys had left much of their confidence behind in Tennessee. I could see it in their eyes as I rode down the infantry ranks: their tense breath, war-worn faces and tight jaws. They needed somebody at the head of this army who they could believe in. 

Hell if that wasn’t me.

“The yankee scum took many of our hometowns this month and pushed us out of a state belonging to our Confederacy. She belongs to us by her own articles of secession!” I yelled into the rows of grey troopers.

“The fact is, boys, if we let Grant and Sherman win, they won’t stop pushing us down.” 

A chill crept up over the green. Rolling winter fog was descending on us like a wave of acid, but I could still make out their bitter, hardened faces in the mist.

“If you’re damn sick of being ignored and harassed by those fucking Northern elites, it’s time to make them stop!” My throat burned with the vitriol in my voice. “Make them hear you! Make them respect you and lay the damn hell off what’s rightfully yours!”

An aide-de-camp of Snoke rode up just then and reined his horse next to mine. 

“Sir, you’re wanted at headquarters,” the man said. My eyes scanned his features for any hint at the state of Snoke’s war room, but his countenance was blank.

“Phasma!” I called my mounted corporal. “Complete the arms inspection and I will return.”

I followed the aide-de-camp with my heart racing, my veins burning with vinegar. I could feel the simmering nausea of anticipation as I dismounted and strode into the courthouse building we had requisitioned for our headquarters.

_Make them hear you. Make them respect you._

Snoke was bent over a desk covered in papers when I entered. He looked utterly laid out in defeat; his power and dignity drained out of him and spattered on the ground. I knew he had been severed from his command.

Ren was beside Snoke. Upon seeing me, Snoke wordlessly removed his spectacles and stepped away from the desk, sunken in his demotion.

“We’ll be separating our defenses.” General Kylo Ren studied the papers, not looking up at me. “Let’s finish this.”

“Finish this?” I snarled, marching toward Ren with pure bile. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

Ren’s eyes lifted from the maps.

“You presume to command my army!” My caustic rage spilled over. “Snoke has vacated his post, you have no comman—!” 

The throat punch came out of nowhere. I didn’t even see Ren move. I was on the ground, choking as he stepped on my neck.

“The General has resigned,” Ren said through gritted teeth, pressing his boot against my windpipe. My vision started to cloud.

“Hail to the General!” I hissed. The pressure on my throat lifted.

The acid rising out of me threatened to fizz up, but it had nowhere to go —I was completely torn down. I swallowed my bitterness, feeling it sear the inside of my body as it went.

There was no chance in hell we could hang on to Georgia fighting under Ren’s emotional, outrageous violence. His hatred of me, and now his complete mockery of my leadership, had neutralized my rise to the top.

What could I do, but bottle up my rage?

I was cleaning up after breakfast when Rose returned to calf camp, dressed to help us with branding.

She carried her enormous skirts in her arms as she approached. I squatted over the fire, so I didn’t get the full effect of her in trousers until she bent down, draping the skirt over a log.

I nearly toppled over.

Her sleeves were rolled up and her hair was knotted at the base of her skull. My trousers looked a little funny cinched around her waist with the belt, and they were probably rolled up four or five times in a thick clump around her ankles, but the overall effect was something I couldn’t quite explain. 

It wasn’t as though I was shocked to see the shape of a woman’s legs. Well perhaps I was, but my attention was drawn to her confidence and ease in men’s clothing. Rose commanded the airs of a high born lady in skirts, but trousers construed her as someone who would not only dictate her wishes to the world, but also make them happen with her own two hands. Rose looked ready to work, but more than that. It was like she saw the world as a manageable set of pistons and gaskets; a few tweaks and everything would turn out alright. I noticed only one thing she lacked.

“Hey, Possum.” I tossed her a whizzing blur of mist-grey wool.

“Not your precious hat!” She pretended to be shocked. “I’m afraid this doesn’t fit me so well.”

Rose set the hat on her head and it sunk down over her eyes.

“Smells a little strangely too!”

“I’m aware my hat doesn’t smell like your frilly flowered numbers in San Francisco, but it will protect your face,” I sniffed.

“What will you wear?” She eyed me, scrutinizing. “Surely that pale skin offers little protection from the sun!”

Rose stood over me. Suddenly my whole body felt alive; though she was half my size she loomed over my crouching form with imposing energy. My mind touched again on the wrongness of my feelings for her, but I was already submitted to her power. If she had told me to pick up a live coal from the fire radiating against my knees, I would have obeyed willingly.

“It’s a wonder your skin is so fair,” she said. “You’d think you would catch some sun living out here.” 

Her hand drifted up to my face. With a rush, I submitted to the back of her soft knuckles grazing my cheek. 

“Or is that what those freckles are for? Capturing sunlight?” Her thumb traced the light hinting of speckles peppering my cheekbone. A slow blink brushed the tip of her thumb with my feathery ginger lashes.

“I’m not the sunshiny type.” 

Rose took both my angular cheeks into her warm hands and searched my eyes. The closed circuit of her touch lit up my insides like one of those fancy incandescent light bulbs.

“You know, you don’t fool anyone when you pretend you’re some kind of dark creature hiding from the sun.” She raked her fingers through my cropped ruff of hair. My eyes drifted closed and I lost the use of words for a moment from the voltage of her finger tips digging into my scalp.

“No,” she whispered with a soft laugh. “You can’t fool me.”

Rose stopped chuckling when suddenly, I caught her hand, opening my eyes. I could feel my expression asking, perhaps begging with intensity crackling from my face. Her reaction told me everything I needed to know. I yanked her down into my lap.

With a playful squeak, she crumpled onto me; her legs parted and those rough trousers coiled around my waist. Her lips found the rough stubble on my chin, she bit into the sharp angle of my jaw. I let out an untethered gasp. The spark of her touch was stunning.

More than anything I wanted to ask Rose what this all meant --whether we were just submitting to the forces of our two bodies or if this was the start of something more. But I couldn’t bring myself to break the current of electricity.

Still kissing me, Rose wrapped her arms around my neck and slid the center between her legs over the ridged surface where my hardened length strained against my own trousers. My desperate intake of air between kisses doubled in speed as she teased my most sensitive member.

“Do you know what to do?” I asked tentatively. “With…?” I swallowed harder than I meant to.

She pulled back, searching my face.

“I know enough.” 

“Have you ever?” 

“I’ve taken some liberties,” she replied. If Rose had any Victorian shame, she hid it.

I was so shaky and awkward. I was certainly no virgin, but something about her made me feel as new as Adam in the Garden of Eden —how the hell would I resist the temptation of my own persuasive snake?

“I’ve…” I cleared my throat. “Never done this with someone I cared about.”

“You said it!” Her face broke into a radiant smile.

“What?”

“You care about me!”

Before I could reply, a shriek ripped across the woods from somewhere down by the creek. Rather than worry, a dart of annoyance pierced me: it was Damerón’s voice, and his slightly ironic timber told me his woe was more an injury to pride than body.

“What is it?” I hollered in the general direction of Poe’s wimpers of self pity.

“I sat on a thistle!” Damerón wailed.

“More like he shat on a thistle!” I said sarcastically to Rose, forgetting for a moment that such things ought never to be spoken to a lady. I blamed the trousers.

“Vicious!” Her mouth dropped open in feigned reproval.

Rose and I split apart as, moments later, Finn came crashing through the woods.

“Poe?” His voice was laced with sincere concern. I mentally marked Finn down as ‘easily duped by a narcissist.’

“Down by the creek,” I said dryly.

Finn hustled through the trees and I rolled my eyes. 

“Oh!” Poe’s voice was dripping with lugubrious pain. “It’s everywhere, Finn, the tiny spines are all over my arse!”

We couldn’t hear Finn’s words but soft, sympathetic tones resonated through trees, punctuated by the occasional yelp from Damerón.

“Hold still!” We could hear the low bark of Finn losing his patience. 

“There’s no way that was an accident,” I snorted, “it’s not like weeds are thick on the ground —even by the creek.”

“I despise thistle, all those terrible, thin little prickles!” Rose wrinkled her nose. “I find it very sweet how kind Finn is to Poe.”

I could sense the subtext of her words, but I wasn’t ready to unpack multiple levels of sexual conversation with her in one sitting. The voices down by the creek lowered and their tone changed. Suddenly, I felt shy about lingering nearby.

“Come on, Possum.” I tipped my head in the direction of the meadow.

“When will you lose that dreadful little pet name?” Rose said, although her voice conveyed the opposite feeling. Tucking her hand in the crook of my elbow, we wandered through the trees.

The air was still briskly sharp, but as we passed between the brown bark pillars of the woods, I caught the syrupy perfume of pines dripping with pockets of pitch: opaque in the dawn chill. The meadow rolled green to our right, the grass shimmering with morning hoarfrost that would fade into the thirsty ground before ten o’clock. I led Rose back through the trees up the edge of the basin. We padded quietly over the carpet of pine needles and made small remarks about the juncos and chickadees that flitted about the ground, scratching for bugs. I held her hand as we splashed across a pebbled lip of Senger Creek.

Quickly, the pine forest landscape changed. Black char scarred the tree trunks as high as six or seven feet and the space between the trees were empty, cleared of brush and undergrowth. The larger logs lying across the ground were blackened and cracked like the abandoned bones of a great violence that had swept through the wood.

“A forest fire.” Rose murmured. She stepped around the roots of an old split stump that had burned into a large charcoal nub and now housed a variety of mushrooms peeping around its crusty, odd form. 

“Some lightning sparked a burn off Turret Peak last September,” I responded. “It stopped when it hit the creek.”

“Were you afraid? For your cabin, I mean?”

“A fire like that would have to get pretty hot to jump across watered grasslands and the multiple tributaries of the Sallie Keyes Creek,” I said. “Besides, fire is necessary for a healthy forest. Look there!” I pointed at a streak of orange up ahead.

“Wildflowers!” Rose cried. She hastened up the hill toward an embankment where the burned ground had been replaced with tender grasses that looked almost too soft for this rugged altitude. Poking up from the grass was a sea of bright orange poppy blossoms. Plopping right in the center of the flowers, she started plucking the stems. “They’re so beautiful!” Rose exclaimed. “Does the fire cause this?”

I squatted down beside her. 

“Wildflowers have a better chance of growing without having to compete with an excess of brush.”

“These ones must be fire poppies” Rose twirled a flower between her finger and thumb. She was pinching the stems with her thumbnail, stringing together the flower blossoms. With her elbows on her knees, her silken skin appeared through the open top of her blouse.

“That’s right,” I agreed, unable to resist looking down her shirt. “There’s also a pink fireweed that comes up around here after a burn, and a red flower with little shooting stars called scarlet gilia.”

“Fire poppies go against everything I learned about gardening,” Rose mused.

I grunted, distracted by the graceful curves inside her blouse.

“You remember that Bible story with the parable of the seeds?”

“No,” I said absently. 

She looked up and caught me staring at her breasts. My cheeks glowed red.

Rose continued, her voice unchanged. “The point of the story is that you need good soil in order for good things to grow, but I just don’t think that’s true.”

“So you’re a better gardener than Jesus, then?” I hid my embarrassment in a tease.

“I’m just saying,” her voice cut through my joking tone, “that not everyone gets perfect conditions, and sometimes events in your life burn everything else to the ground.” She set a crown of orange blossoms on my head. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t be a good person.”

Her hand had trailed down my cheek.

“The poppies match your hair,” she whispered.

I don’t remember if I pushed her back into the flowers first, or if our lips met before we tumbled into the blossoms, tangled in each other's arms. Either way it was like a charge of lightning striking dry tinder: the heat and intensity between our bodies instantly ablaze. Her kisses consumed me; her hands seared me with the urgency of her wanting. When I gripped her waist, I felt with a rush that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath her shirt. I had suspected as much, but the contact of her soft body under my fingertips electrified me.

“Undo my belt,” she ordered. 

I tentatively reached and fumbled with the buckle, still kissing her neck feverishly. Suddenly, her hand planted firmly in my chest. Her face told me I hadn’t been listening to her.

“You can take my trousers and drawers off and touch what you find underneath.” 

She was completely serious. 

My face burned with her directness, but I hadn’t realized how much I needed a lover to speak plainly with me. More often than not, I had no idea what to do. 

I reared back on my knees, offering my full attention to her request, and began slowly unbuckling the belt I’d given her. Her eyes glowed like coals as I undid the buttons of her trousers with trembling hands. I kept eye contact as I eased the canvas down, dragging her cotton drawers down with the trousers. My hands caught the soft give of her cheeks as she let herself sink, bare-arsed into the bed of flowers. I can still remember the herbaceous, sagey smell of crushed blossoms all around her radiant legs that met exquisitely together with a sleek tuft of shining black hair.

I can’t begin to explain why my mind interpreted her instructions as an invitation to move toward that mysterious landscape with my face. I hadn’t actually done this much, but it felt like the most appropriate service I could render to someone as lovely as Rose. I traced my lips up the soft hill of her thigh and she drew in her breath sharply. That was good. I tried it along the other side and she started to squirm underneath me. I looked at her face to see if she wanted me to stop.

“Keep doing that, and get closer.” 

My tongue skimmed the sensitive skin inside of her legs and edged nearer to the mountain. Her hums encouraged my approach. I hardly could believe she would let me draw near to her most sensitive region; I felt like a priest, ascending her heights with a reverent stroke of my tongue. A perfect sigh told me my offering was accepted. 

“Tell me.” Her voice sounded a little milder than I’d yet heard from her: almost timid. “What do I look like?”

I eased back the ridgelines of her skin covered in raven-black hair and found the smooth, pink opening of a wolf’s den, pooling just inside like a cavern lake. The tenderest of places for a wild creature.

“I think you look like a columbine, or a Shasta lily,” I said quietly. She made a pleased sound. 

“What do I taste like?” she asked shyly.

“Hmm.” A carnivorous noise rumbled in my chest as I went back for more. Rose drew a sharp breath as I slid my tongue around the inside of her cavern walls.

“You remind me of switchel, haymaker’s punch.” I replied, remembering the starchy tartness of that classic apple vinegar lemonade --perfectly soothing on an Arkansas summer afternoon.

“You are lovely.” I said, running the tips of my fingers along each valley.

“Ouch, your fingers are too rough.”

“I have something softer,” I offered eagerly, diving back down with my lips. 

My tongue circled each edge of her and she sighed with delight. 

“Oh Lord, that is so much... --God! That’s good!” She squeaked.

The flames started licking at the edge of my consciousness again. I matched my precision with the intensity flaring up in my core: it made her buck and cry out underneath me.

“Ah!” Rose choked. “How can you be so good with your tongue?”

I did wonder that, it was clear this was something that came naturally to me. I adjusted my force and pressure and measured her response. It was clear from the escalating pitch of Rose’s voice that shifting through an arsenal of careful maneuvers was increasing my efficacy.

Christ, was I made to do this? 

As she gasped and wailed with spasms of pleasure, waves of gratified arousal coursed through my blood. Forget war, what if my tactical skill was endowed to me simply for the purpose of pleasing a woman?

She gave a melting sigh and sank back into the poppy blossoms. I got up and stretched out beside her, my desire still insistent against the inside of my trousers. Little orange flowers peeped all about her face with loose strands of her raven hair. 

“Merciful God, that was…” Her head swung around to face mine, her eyes were heavy and dripping with a satisfaction that melted my insides. She kissed me. “Oh my, I taste switchel on your lips!” 

“Nothing better for a summer day,” I smiled, blushing.

“I believe it’s your turn.” Rose raised herself up, swinging a bare leg over my waist.

“Oh!” Desire and shame coursed through me in the same wave. 

Rose lowered her face over mine and gave me a chaste peck on the ridge of my cheekbone.

“Are you ready?” She whispered, tracing her lips affectionately over the slope of my nose.

I was keenly aware of her soft wet flower, still dripping against my abs and I wanted nothing more than to plunge myself into her. Another part of me tensed with fear: there would be no going back after this.

Seeking reassurance in her eyes, I found confidence in her: a self assured groundedness that I felt we could both stand on.

“Yes,” I replied. “I’m ready.” 

This was it, I was offering myself completely to this woman. 

She had my belt buckle in her hands when we heard the whistle. 

It was coming from down the canyon in the meadow: three short blasts. A wave of fear crept over me. Fear and irate frustration.

“Ugh, how can something be wrong, we’ve left them for only a few minutes!” I sat up, my arms drifting protectively around her.

“Does that mean danger?” she asked.

“Yes.” I raked my fingers through my copper hair. “Well that’s capital, I left my rifle back at calf camp!” I scrambled apart from Rose and we stood. She hauled the trousers up over her legs and fastened the buckle.

Unbelievable. Finn and Poe couldn’t watch the herd for a half an hour before they attracted a bear or a cougar?

“Those goddamn idiots!” I growled.

We ran down the hill through the burn and into the trees that fringed the meadow. I yanked my Bowie knife from its sheath and gestured to her.

“Rose, stay close to me!’

She hovered by my side as we burst into the meadow by the round pen. 

Finn and Poe were standing around inside the corral chewing on stems of grass. The horses were all tacked and the branding iron sat in its iron cradle over the embers of the fire. Their body language hinted at tension between the two of them, but there was no visible threat from without. 

As we ran into the round pen, I also noticed that the horses tied to the split rail fence, Milli, Midnight and Lil Bear, all carried lazy, ambivalent stances. Their tails swished with boredom.

“Damerón, what’s wrong?” I shouted, waving my Bowie knife.

He shrugged.

“We didn’t know where you lovebirds got off to and I was tired of waiting around.”

“Poe!” Rose scolded.

“You imbecile!” I snarled. “Warning signals are not to be trifled with, do you know what would happen to soldiers who gave a false alarm?”

Damerón gestured toward my head.

“I’m guessing they didn’t get a pretty little flower crown like you.”

I made a noise like an irate animal and ripped the off-kilter ring of fire poppies out of my hair. Storming over to the fire beneath the branding iron, I squatted down and added fuel to the flames licking up and around the smoldering hot brand.

“Soldiers who gave false reports were branded as traitors, Damerón!” I twisted the brand’s handle, causing the circle R on the end to glow and smolder.

“Take it easy, Captain Hugs.” Poe backed away from fire. “I didn’t mean no harm.”

“You were stupid, Damerón.” Finn’s voice was low and tense. He leaned back against the railing of the round pen and glowered at Poe from under the rim of his hat. “You ain’t taking people serious when they’re just trying to help.”

“Perhaps I don’t need any help, Finn!” Poe snapped.

Finn gave Poe a sidelong look. “Oh, so you want my help when we’re alone at Pilot Rock, but you don’t want me now?”

“Gentleman,” Rose interjected, “why don’t we all just move along?” 

It was a little disappointing to abandon the delightful confluence of everyone’s anger toward Damerón, but Rose was right. The morning was slipping by and we hadn’t even started branding. 

I stood and shot a glare at Poe.

“Alright,” I said in a clipped tone, “we’ve got about sixty cleanskins.”

“I’ll start on the ground, Hux,” Finn offered.

“I think we all know where I’m suited best.” Poe wound up a length of broken-in rope. He cast me a superior glance. I felt my chest rumble but he wasn’t wrong: Damerón’s precision and speed at roping would make the day go more quickly.

“Fine,” I replied. 

“What would you like me to do?” Rose asked. 

I glanced at her. With my hat tipped back on her head, her arms folded across her dusty clothes and a tough, focused look on her face, she looked like a real vaquero --if only a tiny, half-sized one. Everything about her depicted a woman who asked for what she wanted and made things happen. A thought sneaked up on me: why then hadn’t she brought up the lurking question of her fiancé? 

Rose was still looking at me, waiting for me to tell her what to do.

I wanted to tell her to be mine instead of his. 

Of course, I didn’t say this. I told her to hold open the gate.

  
  


Rose was hot.

The sun was creeping high over the jagged granite surrounding the canyon: Ward Mountain, Mount Hooper, Turret Peak, Mount Senger. She imagined these tall rock faces acting like the surface of an oven, radiating the basin like a giant boiling bowl. 

The back of her neck was damp with sweat. She could feel the coarse wool of Hux’s hat resting against her forehead: thick with perspiration. The moisture on her brow somehow diffused the smell of his grey wool hat: not a bad smell, just distinctly him. She blamed this for the compounding volume of wetness in her trousers. His abstract nearness was enough to get her soaking again: the friction of the canvas like a memory of his lips and tongue.

God, it was hot!

Several large horseflies played  _ Chass’ Taupes _ on her arms and face. Rose resisted their niggling presence the way she always handled discomfort: by not sitting still. When Rose stopped moving she thought about Hux and his earnest attentions at the flower bed. He was so sincere and giving, it nearly made her heart break. This was a difficulty: thinking about it made her ask questions she wasn't comfortable broaching yet, but while her mind hadn't jumped to any conclusions, her body most certainly had. In fact, she had finished so hard it felt as though her face had melted off. Dear sweet Lord in Heaven why was it so hot?!

Rose had seen cattle branding before. Beef was a growing staple among Californians and just about everyone she knew back in San Francisco had a herd by the bay. She was used to observing her father and his pudgy friends bounce ridiculously around on expensive saddles while the hired wranglers roped calves and begrudgingly humored their embarrassing input. The dress-up gentleman ranchers, their annoying, machismo “hya’s” and whistles were entirely different from this experience.

She clung to the gate of the round pen, watching the mounted cowboys float with easy grace across the green, encircling the herd of cattle. The cows weren’t lowing or skittering with fright, they loped away from the riders’ pressuring presence in a tight group. Even as the cattledog darted in and out of the cows legs, the beasts seemed hardly perturbed.

Rose’s eyes trained on the chestnut mare and the ginger astride her. Without his grey hat, the loose red waves atop his head splashed casually across his forehead with the gait of his horse. He was so free, she thought. Absolutely mesmerizing. Hux and Milli moved as one interconnected being: they skirted along the edge of the herd with a calculated nearness --just close enough to guide the cows away from the forest. 

A heifer broke loose toward the trees and Hux swerved Milli outward after her. They blocked the heifer head on; Milli crouched low, cutting and dodging with the escapee’s movements like a mirror. When the heifer bolted left, Milli pounced right to head off the animal’s path. The horse pivoted left and right from Hux’s center of gravity in perfect lockstep, the whites of her eyes showing threateningly. While Hux’s face was calm, his focus matched his horse’s intent glare; together they were elegantly ruthless. The heifer abandoned her course and bolted back into the herd.

With flurries of starlings and grasshoppers shooting up from the grass around them, the cattle marched across the meadow toward the round pen. Poe and Midnight galloped up to the far side of the gate, positioned to prevent the cattle from overshooting the entrance, while Finn reined his big bay mare, Lil Bear, behind the herd with Hux and Milli. Together they pressured the cows in a triangle that sent the herd loping into the big round pen.

When the last calf scampered into the corral, leaping and bucking, Rose slammed the gate shut behind them. 

“Beautifully done!” She climbed onto the middle rung of the fence so she was eye level with Hux as he proudly trotted up to her.

“Took a little longer than normal,” he snipped, looking pointedly at Damerón.

“I’ve never seen horses do that,” Rose said excitedly, “Milli was snapping at the cows and giving them wild eyes!” She stroked the mare’s nose.

“She’s a good girl.” Hux patted his horse’s neck appreciatively. Rose loved the innocent affection on his face for his horse. Her heart bobbed at the memory of how exponentially more raw he had looked when he’d lifted his head from between her legs.

Hux slid out of the saddle and hopped off Milli, tying her to the fence in the shade of a clump of aspens. He flapped opened the gawping mouth of his saddle bag and rummaged inside, pulling out a pair of worn leather gloves. Slipping them over his hands, Hux clapped clouds of dust from the gloves and flexed his fingers to stretch the stiff old hogskin. 

Midnight tossed his head, his shining black mane springing with attitude. Poe eased up on the reins and slowed his thoroughbred to a walk. Finn had led Storm to the water trough before tying her up next to Milli.

“¿Estamos listos?” Damerón held the slack loop of his rope. He fed the coarse length through his gloved hands and wound the other end around his saddle horn.

“I’m ready.” Finn nodded.

“Alright, Damerón.” Hux clapped the dusty gloves once more and gave the hot brand in the flames a good twist. “¡Vamonos!”

Poe gave Midnight a squeeze with his legs and picked up a trot. The stallion broke into a slow, rocking canter that gave Poe a few moments to get the rope spinning above his head. Rose wasn’t sure how Midnight knew which calf his rider was after, but the horse sped forward and Poe let the rope fly. She held her breath as the loop sailed through the air and drifted neatly around the calf’s neck. Midnight skidded to a stop when the rope went tight, his back legs tucked underneath him as his haunches crouched. 

The moment the rope jerked, the calf off balance, Finn swooped in and grabbed its hind legs, stretching the animal on the ground. Hux was close behind, holding the brand which glowed hot the color of wood-ash gray.

“¡Voltéalo!” Hux barked at Finn. “¡Los marca en la anca izquierda!”

“¿Por qué?” Finn asked while he flipped the calf to expose its left haunch as requested.

“I brand my calves on the opposite side as the rest of the ranch to mark the difference between mine and Poe’s.” Hux said as he pressed the sizzling brand into the calf’s hindquarters. “It’s an experiment I worked out with Señor Damerón. Different practices and all that.”

“Poe figures if something’s good enough for the ranchers in Owens Valley it's good enough for him,” Finn said.

“And that’s precisely the difference,” Hux lifted the brand from the calf, leaving a crisp circle R, “the old range methods of the traditional vaqueros are superior, in my opinion.”

Hux turned to Rose and gestured toward the gate.

“¡Tlacuache!” He called with amusement playing on his features. “¡Abra la puerta, por favor!”

Rose skittered over to the latch and swung wooden the gate open.

“Tla--what?” She squinted peevishly at Hux.

“You know.” He smirked. 

The word must have meant “possum,” but those green eyes gave her so much more than just a teasing nickname. Rose wondered if he would have called her something else had Finn and Poe not been listening. 

The calf loped through the open gate, twisting and bucking out into the green meadow for a few moments before calmly trotting back toward the fence line near his herd.

When she shut the gate, Hux was at her elbow.

“Watch me a few more times, and then I’d like you to try.”

Rose was surprised he hadn’t asked, but had effectively ordered her to participate. Not that she wouldn’t have offered, but she caught something in the dilation of his pupils, the flush in his skin that couldn’t have been from the least-exerting task of handling the branding iron. He wanted her working with him; he was even possibly aroused by it.

Hux had seemed shy in allowing her to explore his body, perhaps he was inviting her to peel back his layers in the context of work: a setting in which he clearly took much pride. She could always rip off his clothes later.

As next several calves trotted away wearing a sore new circle R, Rose studied Hux. He crouched over the brand as it reheated in the flames, his eyes never leaving Poe’s pursuit of the next calf. Then, once the rope found purchase, Hux snatched up the iron and raced over to where Finn flipped the calf and held down its legs. The actual branding seemed like the trickiest part: Rose could see Hux measure the distance with his eye before setting the hot iron firmly down onto the hindquarter flesh for several seconds before lifting it directly off the imprint. Each of Hux’s brands were in the exact same place on each calf: precise and crisply defined. She was slightly annoyed with his perfectionism, although his attention to detail had certainly been pleasant earlier...

“¿Estas lista, mi tlacuache?” Hux was beside her, biting the fingertip of his leather glove to pull it loose from his sweaty hand.

He had called her possum again. But wait, had he slipped a  _ mi _ ?

Rose took a deep breath.

A smell of smoke with a hint of crushed sage hit her as he drew nearer, holding out the leather that would protect her hands. She sought out his eyes as she took the gloves from him. 

All at once, she was looking at twin green Arkansas wind storms, the force of which rushed against her defenses, tearing at the roof of her heart. She braced herself. If she wasn’t careful, he could blow her away.

“Sí,” Rose said. “Estoy lista.”

Hux tipped his head at Finn, offering a respite from calf wrestling to take over Rose’s gate duties. Without a word, Poe urged Midnight back into the throng of horns and swishing tails, his rope whirling aloft. Quickly, so as not to miss her cue, Rose stuffed her hands into the hot leather and felt her fingers fall several inches short of Hux’s length. Her stomach dropped. Was it true what women said about men’s hands?

“¡Ven conmigo!” He was calling to her. 

Rose looked up from her oversized gloves and saw Poe backing his horse up with a big calf straining against the rope. She grasped the warm iron rod and swung the smoking, radiating brand away from her body, just as she’d seen Hux do. 

She held back a smug smile. If only the cushion-embroidering ladies in Mission Bay could see her now!

He was already beside the calf as she approached. With no hesitation he grasped the animal just below her hocks and with a little grunt of effort, twisted his shoulders so the calf flipped onto her back. He sat on the ground, hauling backward on the calf’s legs to keep her from churning against him.

“Place the brand two hand-widths down from the spine and one over from the pin bone.” Hux instructed through gritted teeth.

Rose assumed he meant his hand-widths, not hers. My, his hands were large.

Measuring as best she could, Rose bit her tongue and decisively pressed the brand down on the calf’s rump. A searing sound rose up with the calf’s disgruntled moo, a cloud of steam and the terrible stench of burning hair.

“Very g…” Hux stopped. “Oh.”

“What?” Rose pulled the brand away.

The circle R was clearly defined and well placed, but the image stood, forever burned onto the animal, sideways.

“Damn it!” She hadn’t realized how much she wanted to do it perfectly for him until her disappointment spilled out in an oath.

“It’s no matter.” Hux’s soft answer washed cooly over her mistake --both the branding and the swearing. He pulled Poe’s rope loose from the calf’s neck and she trotted out into the field.

“Miss Tico, did you label my cow wrong?” Damerón jabbed.

Finn cackled from the fence.

“I always thought Lazy R Ranch was a better fit for Poe anyhow.”

Rose writhed internally with embarrassment.

“I’m sorry, I promise I’ll get it right next time!” she said with a deflated tone.

“It’s alright, Rose.” Hux caught her arm. “We’ve all done it.”

This tenderness surprised her somewhat. His meticulous hair-splitting had subconsciously filled Rose with the fear that he’d measure her in the same scrupulous units. Hux’s face, however, held nothing of the sort. The musky, smokey smell of him enveloped her as he wrapped an arm around her, turning the brand in her hands.

“Line up the top bar of the brand with the spine,” he said. “Other than that, you did well.”

The words poured like warm honey into her, sweet as his soft Southern vowels in her ear. A moment after it was suitable for him to let go, he released her. Rose’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as he backed away and they reset for another calf. 

They moved together this time and she printed a perfect circle R on the next calf, and the two dozen after. She was aware now that her difficulty was not in the minutia of branding technique --that was fairly easy. Her trouble was in focusing on her task while the copper-headed cowboy beside her wrestled and strained with small growling noises that made the crotch of her trousers start to chafe with the drenching of her desire. 

As the sun beat against their backs, Rose thought the heat and exhaustion might eventually overpower the low buzz building once again at the front of her pelvis. But seeing his neck and chest glisten with sweat was even more maddening. Finally, he was fighting against a particularly large calf when he made a gritty, on-the-edge face that made her wonder, ponder imagine: is that what he might look like when he finally drove his cock inside her? 

When she pulled the brand away, it was sideways again.

“Water.” She marched over to the cradle and dropped the branding iron into it with an indignant clang.

“I could use a break!” Finn said, letting the calf out through the gate. Rose brushed past him wordlessly and stalked out of the round pen toward the creek.

“¡Mira!” Poe trotted up to Hux, who stood scratching his head. “¡La calentaste demasiado!”

Hux looked confused, he peered up with suspicion at Damerón's cheeky grin.

“It’s not my fault she’s too hot!” He snorted.

Finn clucked. “You do have a way of pushing people too hard.”

“Her work was perfectly competent,” Hux huffed perplexedly, “I don’t understand what you two are blithering about.”

Poe’s knowing snicker was enough to tempt Hux into physical violence, but the heir to Rancho Damerón was out of range: he dismounted on the other side of Midnight and led his horse to the water trough. Hux snatched up his canteen and followed Rose’s path to the creek.

She was coming the opposite direction when they met in the trees, Rose was holding Hux’s grey hat in one hand. Trails of water poured from her sopping wet head.

“Rose, did you… submerge your entire head in the creek?”

“It’s quite warm out there,” she coughed. “What with all the physical activity.”

“Forgive me if I’ve asked too much of you.”

“It’s not that.”

“I understand you wish to feel included, but perhaps…”

“...I want you.” Rose blurted, her chest rising and falling as if the power of the midday sun was blazing down on her.

Hux could speak English, French, German, Spanish and passable Uto-Aztecan but no words came to him.

“I want you --all of you, everything,” she repeated.

He didn’t think to ask her what she meant by that, but at any rate, their lips were busy.

  
  


Friends, I am just speechless over this incredible artwork commissioned for this story by @dark-london on Tumblr. Dark London was just amazing at getting the minutia of Hux's uniform correct, he has a real, legit 1st Arkansas Infantry Regiment belt buckle and replica sword, zoom in on that baby!!

Just so this image wouldn't get misconstrued on Tumblr, we had the grey outfit darkened because we don't want to actually seem supportive of the Confederates or their horrible, shitty, racist cause. You guys all understand the context of this story and what I'm trying to do here. At any rate, Hux looks more First Order adjacent this way!

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thanks to @CaroHux for helping me with the Spanish translation and grammar!! 
> 
> Poe, Finn and Hux roll into Spanish during the branding process because cattle roping was a practice introduced by the Latinx vaqueros, especially in the 1800s when anglo-american ranchers were still mostly using fences and ground-based cattle handling. The roping we see today in competitions is a blend of vaquero and anglo calf handling technique, Rancho Damerón would definitely stick to the vaquero methods.
> 
> "¡La calentaste demasiado!" is a naughty way to say that Hux made Rose feel too hot! Thanks @CaroHux for that tidbit!
> 
> For fun, go get on Google Earth and poke around Blayney Meadow in the 3D setting! You can zoom in on the hot springs on the south end of the meadow and then follow the San Joaquin River north up to Florence Lake!  
> https://earth.google.com/web/search/Blayney+Meadows,+CA,+USA/@37.24794678,-118.89758056,2375.41432829a,2708.00618276d,35y,40.88179485h,59.98803502t,359.99999915r/data=CigiJgokCd1JfMsLpEJAEe28GflJn0JAGQPPrjnPuV3AIQr8DAq_v13A
> 
> Fire Poppy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaver_californicum  
> Fireweed: https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/chamerion_angustifolium.shtml  
> Skyrocket or Scarlet Gilia: https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/ipomopsis_aggregata.shtml  
> Columbine: https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/beauty/columbines/aquilegia_formosa.shtml  
> Shasta Lily: https://calscape.org/Lilium-pardalinum-ssp.-shastense-(Shasta-Lily)?srchcr=sc5ef3b49a482ed  
> Purple Monkeyflower: https://calscape.org/Mimulus-lewisii-(Lewis'-Monkeyflower)?srchcr=sc5ef3b4bd69c94 
> 
> Make your own 1800’s sports drink, switchel or ‘Haymaker’s Punch:’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JFgwM8wk8c 
> 
> Chass’ Taupes is a French Board game similar to the idea of Whack-a-mole.
> 
> This is what “cutting” looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCRzUjn4I7I
> 
> YOU GUYS! Tell me what you think of this update! Did you like Hux's TLJ moment at the beginning of the chapter? WHAT did you think of the flowerbed scene??? Did you like the branding?


	11. I Take the Forbidden Fruit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is has explicit content. (squeeee!!!)
> 
> Thank you as always to the brilliant beta-reader, @ElfMaidenofLight! Definitely go check out this genius boss' work!

Once, I was playing outside behind my father’s plantation house, throwing sticks and pebbles down into the window well by the basement-level kitchen, as any seven year old boy would be inclined. That’s when I saw them. 

Six brilliant, ripe tomatoes sitting temptingly inside the window sill. 

They were calling to me. I reached down with a gangly little arm and plucked one off the ledge, skittering back into the bushy plumes of juniper hedge where I could examine my prize. The tomato fit in the palm of my hand; the juices strained against its thin crimson flesh, begging to be bitten. I contemplated my naughtiness as I pressed its glossy skin to my nose. The sugary, slightly peppery perfume of the tomato threw confusion into my seven-year-old perception of good and evil. Here I was, a little boy: created to behave myself, and yet here was a forbidden fruit: created to be eaten.

Before I had fully decided whether I wanted to go to heaven or hell, a burst of sweetness flooded my mouth and I knew Adam had given up Paradise for a tomato. Clusters of seeds and rich tartness dribbled down my chin, staining my blue cambric shirt and trousers. God, hell was so sweet.

After I ate one, I went for another. 

My sticky little hands were reaching down for the last tomato when a face appeared inside the kitchen. Instantly, my spirit plunged into damnation just as I lost my balance and fell head first into the window well. The next hour was spent tasting the sting of lashes and reprobation from the angry cook. As I leaned up against the willow tree and took my switching, I looked down at the tomato stains on the trousers around my ankles. Maybe heaven and hell are inseparable, I thought. 

If you want a bit of heaven, you’re gonna get a serving of hell to go along with it.

  
  
  
  
  
  


By the time we were finished branding the last calf, my legs and arms shook with exhaustion. In my pride and attempt to impress Rose, I had forgotten that I was no longer in my twenties. However, it was only partially my fault that I had overexerted myself. Each smoldering little glance from Rose sent a fresh jolt of energy through my body, and I could feel my insides sizzle like the hot brand I held in my hands. I would even venture that it cost me more effort not looking at her than it took for me to wrestle calves.

In the presence of Finn and Poe, we wove in and out of each other’s proximity like courting sparrows, ever mindful of the distance between our bodies while trying not to be obvious. At least, I hoped it wasn't obvious.

Every time a passing brush of the arm or saucy glance was exchanged, I checked for a reaction from Finn or Damerón. At first, I thought they were politely ignoring our not-so-subtle failures at discretion, but then, when Rose switched back to holding the gate, I realized Finn and Poe were in a tense mating dance of their own. 

When Finn wasn’t looking, Damerón’s face would twist with pining. Every time his eyes fell on Finn’s busy, moving form, he stared: the dark pupils of his eyes expanding, his cheeks stained with pink. And yet, as soon as Finn glanced his direction, Poe buttoned up his feelings and looked away. After I had mentally logged several sightings of this, I studied Finn carefully. Did he feel the same way? 

Already, I found that our brief conversation last night about the war had sparked a tension between Finn and I. As we worked with the calves, Finn mostly regarded me with professional indifference. He was helpful and quick to assist me. Yet every so often our eyes would lock and a chill darted through my chest: clearly Finn knew more about me than he had shared around the campfire. 

Finn had been cross with Poe all day since the incident with the thistle, but his eyes told me a different story. As Damerón reined Midnight into the herd of cows, cutting and dodging expertly with his rope whirling aloft, Finn watched. He stood casually, even facing indirectly sometimes, but I could tell he followed Poe’s every movement. Even while Finn ran up with the branding iron, I watched him steal glances at the mounted cowboy. 

They were clearly drawn to one another in a way that I recognized, but my Victorian sensibility prevented me from overtly acknowledging. Had my mind been in a state to examine what I was doing, I might have mused upon which couple was more drastically breaking societal convention. As it was, I was making mental field notes about Finn and Poe to prevent myself from running to the fence and throwing Rose over my shoulder.

“This is the last one!” Damerón shouted, looping the rope around the saddle as Midnight levered back into a crouch against the weight of a calf. The creature bawled and fought against the rope around her neck, kicking madly as my tired hands closed around her hocks. I flipped her with an embarrassing gasp of effort. My eyes darted to Finn, who held the brand now; but he wasn’t judging my slipping strength: he ran up with an equal hint of exhaustion affecting his movements. We were all bone tired.

Rose’s unflagging cheeriness, however, was not to be subdued. Even as her body strained against the gate to open it one last time, she called to the calf with a cordial tone.

“Come on out, little one!” Her chipper voice rang over the green as the calf skittered through the gate to join the grazing group in the meadow just outside the round pen.

The rest of us moved like we were wading through a bowl of pea soup. Damerón trotted behind the herd, pushing the cows toward the open gate to let them out into the meadow. The group recalcitrantly moved toward the other side of the round pen, but shied away from the opening where Rose stood.

I was about to call her away from the gate when one leader cow bolted for the exit and ran out into the meadow. A few followed until a critical mass of the brown, horned creatures were pouring out of the round pen and into Blayney’s open expanse of tall grass.

The sun was sinking behind the saddle of the ridge beside Ward Mountain. Black silhouettes of the peaks stood in sharp relief below the fading streaks of ochre, magenta and violet. The canyon received a half hour of eerie, hovering light before the sun's full disappearance behind the cusp of the earth, so we made short work of untacking the horses and cleaning up. Poe turned out Milli, Midnight and Lil Bear while Finn and Rose put out the fire. I cooled the brand in the water trough with a mighty, steaming hiss.

When I finished my tasks, I found my head swiveling around, searching subconsciously. I had been so careful to abstain from looking at her all afternoon and now I was tired of holding back my wanting.

I heard her first. Rose’s clear laughter carried through the trees and she appeared in the clearing, chatting animatedly with Poe. My heart sank with jealousy as I watched them wander toward the creek. Damerón seemed to revive in her presence, his tone lifted and energy renewed enough to launch into another of his braggadocious stories. I watched them, prickling with envy.

Stuck with Finn, we trailed silently behind the more talkative pair.

Finn watched Damerón out of the corner of his eye as he knelt beside the creek, filling his canteen. I dropped to my knees in the clumps of quackgrass and plantain and splashed icy water over my sweat-crusted face. The shock always heightened my senses. I grew in awareness of the inside of my right knee issuing a creaky protest, the pleasant ache in the muscles of my arms and shoulders and of course the insistent longing between my legs which had remained somewhere between mildly piqued and half mast all day. Terribly painful.

Rose and Poe were laughing now; Finn grit his teeth with a tight shake of his head before catching my eye.

“What are you looking at?” he snapped.

“Nothing,” I replied, my gaze falling to the creek.

I filled my canteen, the soft slurping sounds of water drawn into the tin container punctuated our silence.

“Give Damerón time,” I murmured without looking up. “He’ll get over himself eventually.”

“Don’t patronize me,” he growled.

“I’ve got no quarrel with you, Finn,” I said trepidatiously.

“Hmm.” Finn sat back on his heels, his glare registering mistrust.

“And why would you suggest that, General?”

I steeled myself with the sound of that name, a wave of familiar, rigid chill rising up in me. My eyes darted to Poe and Rose who were already walking back toward calf camp, the sounds of their animated chatter receding into the forest.

The voice that came out of me next was one I hadn’t heard in a while. My vowels were less relaxed, the tone tighter somehow.

“You didn’t expose me to the group last night,” I said slowly. “Why?”

In the growing darkness, Finn’s eyes were two coals of burning reproach.

“‘Cause I heard about what you did,” Finn responded.

“Then you know I’m not your enemy.”

A low rumble buzzed in my skull and I realized it was Finn growling. He stood over me, his body winding up.

“Enemy,” he echoed bitterly. “Like the enemy who’s born with a silver spoon wrought off the backs of stolen labor, or the enemy who organizes an entire army to keep my people enslaved?”

The only sound for several moments was the wind through the aspen trees. Shame washed over me. Its biting current was too bitter for me to fully absorb, but I was surprised to find it wasn’t followed by a compulsion to resist Finn’s words. I didn’t feel a wave of self-defensiveness like I might have, had I still felt defined by my inheritance or military status. 

I just felt sad.

“You’re right,” I said. I clamped my mouth shut.

Finn stepped back and stared up at the sky; stars were beginning to peep out from the swath of navy above us.

“I moved out west ‘cause I actually believed I could be free here.” He shook his head. “But we can’t, can we?”

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.

His eyes narrowed and I could feel him measuring me. Then, his features seemed to relax some. In the last traces of light filtering through the trees, he looked tired.

“Just stay the hell out of my business with Poe.” Finn wiped his forehead with his bandanna and marched stiffly down the trail.

I stayed on my knees by the creek for a few moments so I could walk to calf camp by myself. 

In those minutes, I nearly reconsidered my intentions for the rest of the evening. Finn knew about General Hux, not only the brutal Confederate commander, but also the murderous plantation owner’s son. Like a trout blipping above the surface of the water, a past version of myself had risen up from his submerged grave and broken through my consciousness. I could see in my mind the person Finn had heard about: steely eyes drained of feeling, tight lips curled in a superior sneer, flawlessly dressed and groomed to set himself apart from the miserable scum. Back-stabbing. Calculating. Ruthless. My shame spoke louder in my head than it had for several days. 

_ Who’s to say you’re not still that person? Eventually, who you are and what you’ve done is going to hurt Rose. _

Had I sat there longer, I most certainly would have settled on turning away her advances. I might have even crafted the words to refuse her. She didn’t give me the chance.

“There you are!” A small shadow in the shape of Rose appeared through the trees. 

Inexplicably, the glow of twilight seemed to linger about her face where elsewhere it had faded into darkness. I felt my self-reproach dim somewhat as she came nearer; surely shame had no place wherever that hopeful smile went. After all, she had said only hours ago that she wanted all of me  — everything.

“Hello.” My insides warmed.

Rose crossed the clearing, holding my hat in her hands.

“Are you alright, Hux?” She asked, surveying my face as she approached. I thought she was moving with the decided expectation to touch me, and I avoided this by starting to pick myself up off the ground.

“Quite alright,” I echoed. My muscles had started to stiffen from kneeling, as I stood I could feel twin wet patches on the knees of my trousers from the cool, saturated grass.

The posture of Rose’s body registered confusion.

“Why do I get the sense that your mind is elsewhere?” She pressed me. 

“I suppose I’ve had a bit of a run in with a ghost.” I bit back a much longer answer.

Even in the dark I could tell her eyebrows were raised.

“Really?” Her voice sounded unsure if I was joking or serious. “Whose ghost?”

“My own, I’m afraid,” I said with a small, sarcastic laugh.

Rose seemed puzzled by this cryptic macabre and made no reply. In the faint illumination, she reached out and offered me back my grey hat. I took it from her hands and settled it on my head with a habitual tug on the brim.

“Are you familiar with the works of Edgar Allan Poe?” I asked.

She made a disgusted noise.

“Dreadful,” Rose said, “I despise all of his poems and stories.”

“No taste for scratches at the door or gloomy ravens?” I grinned.

She made a noise like she was wondering if I even knew her at all.

“I promised never to read another Edgar Allan Poe the morning after I read the ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ —I didn’t sleep a wink!”

“Oh yes, the one with the ill-begotten three wishes,” I remembered with a chuckle. “That did have a rather nasty ending didn’t it?”

We began walking back to calf camp.

“Don’t tell me you’re a great admirer of his?” she teased.

“I was just thinking of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, ‘Visitations of the Dead’.”

“Sounds miserable.” I could hear her eye roll.

“Hush now, it’s a great piece of prose,” I scolded, clearing my throat.

_ Be silent in that solitude,  _

_ Which is not loneliness—for then  _

_ The spirits of the dead who stood  _

_ In life before thee are again  _

_ In death around thee—and their will  _

_ Shall overshadow thee: be still.  _

“He fancies the dead reunited with old friends again in the graveyard,” Rose sighed. “Sad.”

“Perhaps that’s one layer of meaning, but I think in solitude we aren’t just alone with the memories of people who have died, but also with the memories of our old selves.”

“That sounds overly critical.”

“Or simply introspective,” I replied. “Are you afraid to examine yourself?”

“No!” Rose shot back quickly. “But why bother with the past when you can’t change it? It’s trouble enough thinking about who you want to be in the future.” She huffed, snapping the reaching branch of a passing gorse bush in her path.

It was impossible for me to explain how closeby my past selves often felt, how completely inescapable they were. Even if the quiet of the mountains stilled my mind, I knew I still dragged these ghosts around with me everywhere I went.

“I would hope that considering past mistakes might be helpful for guiding the future,” I shrugged. “Maybe it will prevent a person from following the same path again.”

“I think regrets are for people who are unkind to themselves,” Rose said with affectionate sternness.

“And you think I’m one of those people?” 

Rose stopped.

“I think you should quit talking about ghosts and kiss me.” 

Perhaps she was right, maybe I was too hard on myself.

Quickly, and a bit roughly, I seized her and I took her lips with mine. Rose’s soft contours fit into my hard lines, her body an escape from all my tormenting questions. The skin on her neck was slightly sticky and dusty under my fingertips, and I tasted salt on her top lip. The surge of impulse and desire quickly drowned my burdens, submerging General Hux back under the surface of my mind where I tried to keep him. Rose made a small sigh as my arms wrapped around her; the overwhelming sensation of this woman pressed against me pushed everything else aside.

Three short blasts of gunfire rang from the north eastern rim of the canyon.

“What was that?” Rose pulled away.

“I’m not sure,” I suppressed an annoyed growl. I moved in for another kiss when Rose placed her hand on my chest.

“Maybe we should check with Poe and Finn.”

“Alright,” I grumbled. These interruptions were becoming ridiculous.

Finn and Poe were darting about calf camp when we came into the clearing,hastily saddling their horses as Rose and I approached. Lil Bear nickered uneasily in the dim twilight as we came up to the round pen fence.

“Was that Newby, Damerón?” I asked. I could see the dark shadow of Poe adjusting the saddle on Midnight. He pulled the leather strap to tighten the cinch with an elbow to his horse’s ribs to keep the animal from sneakily sucking in air: a familiar trick horses pull to keep the saddles cinched up looser around their girth. Finn was putting the wool saddle blanket over Storm’s back beside Damerón.

“Must be trouble up at Double Meadow,” he replied. “Newby’s a fly in the marmalade, but he wouldn’t signal us if there wasn’t something wrong.”

“How very considerate of him,” I said with a barbed tone. 

“What if he’s gotten news of your father?” Finn asked quietly.

Poe let out a strained puff of air.

“Señor Damerón?” I asked, dropping the reproach in my voice. “He was recovering when I left the valley.”

After a moment of silence from Poe, Finn filled in.

“His illness returned just after we finished our branding,” Finn said. “He insisted we go up into the backcountry, he wouldn’t let Poe stay.”

“Are you alright, Poe?” Rose’s concern showed more empathy for young Damerón than I thought he would ever deserve, but still I found it quite touching.

“Let’s hope it’s only wolves,” Poe said grimly. He brought the reins over Midnight’s ears, jammed his boot in the stirrup and swung his leg over the saddle. Finn vaulted onto Lil Bear with a calm ease that contrasted Damerón’s anxious haste. 

“Signal us if there’s any real trouble,” I said.

“Don’t know, Hugs,” I saw Poe’s teeth flash in the darkness, “I’m powerful fond of seeing you hasten to my rescue whether the trouble’s real or not.” 

He laughed like he could see that I was turning red, although I was glad he could not.

“Alright,” Finn interjected, “two shots for all clear, three if we need help.”

“Take care, now!” Rose called as the two dark riders wheeled their mounts around and rode across the field toward the trail.

We stood listening to the trees in lieu of any sound of their departure; after several minutes a distant whinny told us they had reached the treeline where the trail turned upward toward, the two meadows sitting atop a plateaued leg of Mount Senger. 

The tension of being alone at last was almost too great for Rose and me. Keeping up appearances for onlookers had made our desires flare up in sudden bursts, but now the lack of prying eyes made physical contact less like an impulse and more like a decision. Would she still decide to have me?

We began walking back toward calf camp but slowed down as we came to a place where the path split off in two directions. One way led back to the camp, and the other headed through the trees toward the cabin. The moon was starting to peek up above the ridgeline, catching the shimmering tips of the meadow grasses like waves in a great ocean. 

My stomach tensed. At calf camp there were two bed rolls on opposite sides of the fire and a great expanse of space in which we could silently drift about our evening chores and pretend our series of indiscretions over the past twenty four hours had never happened. In the cabin, however, there was one bed. The swallowing coziness of that one room would keep us in intimate proximity. The path forward was the total consummation of this, whatever it was, and that little trail to the left was my final chance to veer off. 

A jolt of panic darted through me as the fork in the path was nearly underfoot. 

I might be a lost cause, but what if every interruption between Rose and me was Providence’s way of guiding her towards righteousness? What if the trail toward the cabin was the road straight to hell and I was leading her down it? 

_ Oh Christ, you’re not really going to bed an engaged woman?  _ My heart was pounding in my throat. With a surge of fear, I started to move toward the left. 

She caught my arm.

Moonlight fell on Rose’s face, its silvery traces touching her cheek and the glossy river of her black hair. When had she loosed her hair? The corner of her lips hitched up with an effortless certainty, and she tilted her head toward the cabin trail without the slightest hint of worry. 

That’s what I wanted. 

I wanted to feel her confidence, to sink myself inside that uncomplicated self-assurance that was Rose Tico. The thought of it began to roar against the dam of my scruples. Slowly, my long, rough hand closed around her small, soft one.

“It’s really now or never, isn’t it?” I asked, the floodgates of my desire beginning to tremor and buckle.

“I tend to think now is now,” Rose replied.

“Now is now,” I repeated.

“Will that suit you?” she asked, with a severity that told me she wouldn’t ask twice.

All of my feelings were swelling at the brink of the dam; I couldn’t even absorb what she was saying. Thinking back, if I had considered the meaning of ‘now is now’ I might have understood more about the state of her mind at that moment. Had I known what she truly meant, I most certainly would have continued to calf camp and avoided what happened next.

Of course, had I done that, I would have missed all of it. Which, upon further reflection, I will never, ever in one thousand shining moonlit nights, come to regret.

“Yes.” My voice was drowning with the torrenting flood of thrill, arousal, and wild, reckless hope. 

“Then, come on!” Rose gave me a playful shove and bolted down the trail. “Chase me!” She dashed ahead of me, her raven locks streaming behind her like the pennant of a retreating flag.

I could have easily caught up to her just then, but a battle plan sprung into my head with a more optimal location for the final stroke of victory. She laughed and squealed as I pursued her through the trees along the edge of the meadow until we were nearly at the cabin.

My tactician’s mind lit up with the angles and degrees of her trajectory, drawn over my own mental map of the landscape. I followed her through the trees before fading into the thicket, my footsteps flying silently behind a curtain of brush as she ran along the trail. Rose tossed a glance over her shoulder and stopped.

“Hux?” She called. “Are you there?” Her voice was touched with concern. Perhaps she wondered if I had decided against our liaison and fled.

I crept along the edge of the brush until I had passed her down the path.

“Hello?” Her voice wavered.

Suppressing a grin, I shook a bush.

“Hux?”

The bush shook harder.

Rose was frozen, half-crouched. I could see her breathing quickly. The back of my neck prickled with the desire to abandon my strategy and pounce on her right then and there. But I was patient. Always patient.

With a ridiculous bear noise, I leaped out of the bushes and drew from her an ear-splitting scream. Her shriek faded into hysterical laughter as she dodged my attack, retreating into the meadow. She was headed in the right direction, but her course was off slightly.

I ran up into her field of vision at her left flank, sending her swerving toward the river.

“You’ll have to run faster than that to catch me!” she yelled. 

Her face calling back to me was obscured by shining ribbons of black hair caught in the wind. With the swipe of her arm she cleared her face and scrambled up a little bluff overlooking the South Fork of the San Joaquin River. When she reached the top of the plateau, she stood still. With a posture that told me she knew precisely why I’d chased her there, she swiveled around and watched me ascend the small slope. 

The bluff was an ideal bit of high ground, far enough above the river so that the tender meadowgrass wasn’t damp, but close enough to hear the powerful roar of snowmelt; it coursed in frothy curtains around the stacks of smoothed granite. It was so perfect in fact, that I had built my cabin on this very plateau several dozen yards from where we stood. I could see the back of it tucked cozily in the hem of cedars and pines.

“You want me here, don’t you.” Her eyes were as dark as the creek shadowed under sedge leaves and rushes.

“Yes.”

The thundering voice of the river in high summer rose above the small night sounds. I might have shouted my response over the water. Or I might have just breathed it.

I didn’t remember closing the distance between us until I was standing inches from her, her face turned toward the full moonrise, bright as day.

“Would you take off my clothes?”

She had asked this time, instead of ordered. 

I liked it when she’d been commanding. Doing exactly what she specified made my stomach curl with absurd pride. The good soldier in me wanted to fulfill her desires with perfection. There was something else though: when she piloted my actions, it released a pressure valve that I hadn’t even noticed until it was relieved. Former colonel or not, I discovered that I liked to take orders in bed.

But this was different.

Something soft and demure had come over her: not a dimming of her brilliance but an opening of her tenderness. She asked me like a bride on her wedding night. This wasn’t the Rose upon whose confidence I could ignore my own doubt, and it scared me for a moment. This wouldn’t be right unless I was strong too; unless I wanted it. Unless I chose her.

I nearly pulled away, uncertain that I could be strong.

Rose didn’t beg. She waited, face drenched in moonlight.

A thought gripped me as my eyes traced the streaks of silver on her cheeks. How would the moonlight look on her shoulders? Her collarbone? I didn’t even need to think further southward before my hands found the buttons of her shirt.

I wanted this. I chose it.

This internal pivot of decision sent a burst of arousal through my blood, as furious as the river. I felt this momentum clear away the cluttering doubts and suspicions around the edges of my consciousness and crash, full force, into her. I took her face in my hands and pressed my lips to hers like the rush of the San Joaquin against the granite. She moved with me, the pitch of her breath increasing between kisses. Her tongue clashed with mine, the taste of the mint growing along the creek betrayed her intentions. After clawing apart her buttons, I yanked open her shirt. 

The warm flesh of her breasts pooled against my thin calico shirt, and I moaned, raking my teeth across her neck. I knew just how to take my own belt buckle and button fly off of her, and I did so while muttering nonsense about how she tasted and felt, every word obscured by the roaring of the river. My hands skimmed her arse cheeks as she stepped out of the trousers, and she made a small, delirious sound that sent blood cascading down to the base of my cock. I could feel every bit of her under the tips of my fingers; I knew that looking at her would make me hard to the point of excruciation, but it hurt not to look.

As I stepped back, the air hissed out from between my teeth. 

I was a tactician, someone who knew landscapes through detailed mental maps, and I had come to know the major planes and ridges of Rose Tico over the last several days, but nothing, nothing compared to seeing her naked body all at once, luminous and shimmering.

Rose tipped her chin up bravely, although I wondered if she found this necessary to counteract a hidden apprehension. Her smile was easy, dauntless as always, but her eyes were asking me what I thought.

My eyes were too busy taking her in to have formed a coherent picture —much less the words to describe it.

Everything about Rose looked deliciously tactile, like she would never waste her silhouette on a purely visual replica of herself, like a painting or one of those newfangled photographs, because every curve and soft give of her body was meant to be touched. My carnivorous mind was debating between which appetizing surface I wanted to touch first when I caught a movement on her face. I looked up, slack jawed, and saw that she was still waiting for something.

“B-beautiful,” I stuttered, my cheeks burning as I failed to employ language. 

Her laughter was as clear as the Sallie Keyes spring.

“No, silly,” her lips quirked. “I asked if I could take your clothes off.”

“Oh.” If the sun had been illuminating the bluff instead of the moon, she would have seen me turn even redder.

“Well?” A playful sparkle flitted across her face.

I swallowed. 

“Hux, I have already seen you down to your smallclothes.”

That was a good point.

“Yes, I suppose…” I started to fumble with the buttons of my calico.

“Let me.”

She strode closer, her nakedness hovering just within the radius of my body heat. She reached up for the buttons. A breast grazed against my bare abs as she opened my shirt and I felt an unhinged moan reverberate in my closed mouth. Heat plunged down through my core and stirred the painful aching of my need.

It was worse when her hands brushed against the tent below my belt buckle.

“Do you like that?” She stroked the tense lump through my trousers.

“Maybe ease up some?” I tried to sound like I wasn’t gritting my teeth.

I was desperate, terrified that I would let loose the second she laid me bare.

She opened my trousers and I felt the chill of night creep around my oversensitive nether region. Helping me shake my ankles loose from my penultimate layer, she stood up again and regarded me questioningly.

“Are you ready?”

“I am.” My voice was steadier than my flopping heart. 

“Not quite.” She flirted. With a quick movement of her hand, she batted the brim of my hat and it flipped off my head. It rolled down the hill.

Rose untied the drawstring of my flannel drawers and pushed them off my hips before I could reconsider. I braced myself and fought to keep from spilling early by thinking about skunks.

And then I was naked, standing before a woman I’d known less than a week, a woman for whom I would happily die for, but perhaps more crucially, live for.

At this moment, the woman was studying my straining, veiny member with a rapt interest.

“Hmm,” she said.

“Have I, eh…” I flinched. “Fallen short?”

“Oh, stars no!” Rose didn’t take her eyes off my cock. “I was simply trying to decide where to put it.”

This statement pushed me closer to the brink. 

_ Skunks, skunks, skunks.... _

Her hands were soft and warm exploring my bare hips to the cheeks of my arse. She held the backs of my thighs as she bent and closed her lips around my tip, soft as Lamb’s Ear. 

_ Skunks under a wagon wheel, skunks pan fried, Damerón’s skunk hat... _

“Hux?” Rose was looking up at me.

“Yes?”

“Are you alright?” 

“Perfectly,” I choked.

“You just said something about Poe’s skunk hat.”

_ Well, fuck. _

“What do you need?” she asked quietly.

The question startled me. I had felt so competent when Rose communicated what she needed; I would do anything for her, but these attentions were bordering on unbearable. I had no map, no way forward that offered something to anticipate or expect. 

I drew in a deep breath.

“Let’s lie down,” I said.

“Good.” Her face tried to hide a twinge of humor.

We pressed our sides against the cool grass, our bodies a hand’s width apart. Lying down, we were eye to eye. I stroked her cheek as the brilliant galaxy above us reflected in her dark pupils. She dug her fingers through my hair with long strokes that sent tingling sparks through my brain.

“Just let go, my sweet,” she kissed my forehead, her soft body crushing up against me. Every point of contact was different, from the pillowy give of her breast to the soft yield of her belly against mine, to a scratchy tuft of fluff brushing against the inside of my thigh. Each place sent waves of heat down to the base of my core.

I traced the articulated bumps of her spine and pulled a sigh from her when I reached its base. Drawing circles on her sensitive skin with my fingertips made her hum. Hearing her breathing increase, my hand darted around to the peak of her entrance and found her tiny pearl. Her hips started to tense as I worked around her sensitive bit; she parted her legs to open her soft pink clutch to me. Dampness began to drench my hand and early fluids started to creep from my cock as well.

Rose was the queen of enrapturement. She fully embraced everything I was doing to her, arching and writhing underneath my contact with little squeaks and moans when I touched her just right. Her hand was closing around my cock as she rode her fingers up and down its length, compounding the pressure building between my hips. She was clearly close to coming undone, her heels fought the grass like she was running in place. Finally, the tense storm between my legs grew into a wild twister.

In a quick movement, I suspended myself above her. My knees dug in the grass between her parted legs and I slid my hand slid up her stomach. It rested between her breasts, over her heart. Breath hitched, my nose brushed against hers as I drank in those dark eyes. Her hair was fanned out around her head, her cheeks and décolletage glistened with sweat.

“Will you have me?” I asked again, a request under which I mentally wrote in small script: ‘for all eternity, body and soul, mine forever?’

“Please, yes!” she cried, her eyes tender and raw.

I watched those eyes as I guided myself to her entrance and slid into her warm, wet secret with a grunt of euphoria. She sighed as I filled her, her gaze going soft and runny as we found a rhythm together. My temples hummed with warmth as the pressure increased. I let my head hang down so my lips brushed against her neck.

_ I love you. _

It was a whisper under the sound of the San Joaquin, but I said it. The truth of it ran hot through my veins and spilled out into words that I hadn’t even attempted to hold back. 

I was sure she didn’t hear me, but curiously, her fingers threaded into my hair, her face turned so that her mouth closed around mine. Her chest buzz with a contented sound that didn’t reach my ears.

She started to twist and gasp again; my pace increased and I found myself repeating her name over and over. The river in my nerves was building, pounding, forcing itself up to the brink and it roared in my ears. I had nearly come to the end of myself when her eyes met mine for the briefest instant. 

Two things happened next. The first was a singularity that burst in the center of my pelvis and juddered through my core with an intensity that rushed into every corner of me. Second, I saw Rose.

The moment before we locked eyes she tightened and spasmed around my cock, a wail erupted from somewhere deep inside her and she opened the window to her soul.

She didn’t know. 

The woman who had just joined my flesh, who had come apart around the very fabric of my body; she didn’t know if she wanted me. It was right there on her face: a rush of uncertainty before she gave herself over.

It was the most painful contradiction of letting off that I’d ever experienced —the physical sensation was so intense after twenty four hours of waiting but at the same time, my heart was breaking. 

I squeezed my eyes shut, holding back a prick of moisture at the corner of my eyes from the intensity of my release and breathed through my teeth as my blood slowed. Rose’s chest rose and fell underneath me. With an added rush of shame I realized I was crushing her with my spent body.

I rolled off of Rose, laying beside her under the stars. I clutched my chest, panting, feeling that if the muscle pumping my blood would just stop, then it would be easier.

“That was...” Rose laughed softly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen stars like that.”

I grunted.

The sound of the wind ruffling the aspen leaves was barely audible above the river. I smelled crushed grass and sex. She raised herself up on her elbow and made a small hum as her fingertips traced my cheek down to the bristles of my jawline. 

“How do you feel, Hux?” She asked with the hypnotic sweetness of perfect satiation in her voice. I shivered as she brushed back the loose copper hair from my forehead, but I did not look at her.

“I…” My voice cracked fragilely, “I have questions.” 

Rose seemed to constrict. 

“What exactly did you mean by wanting all of me? Everything?”

Her silence told me that she already knew our definitions didn’t exactly line up.

“I meant this,” she replied. “You and me here, now.”

“Now is now,” I remembered. The word was two punches to my gut.

“Exactly.” Her soft answer hinted that she wasn’t satisfied either.

“What about tomorrow, Rose?” I held onto my voice like a vice to keep it from breaking. “Will you want me then?”

“Yes.” Her tone wasn’t convincing enough.

I sat up and scanned her face as she blinked up at the sky.

“Why have you said nothing about your fiancé?” I demanded hoarsely. “Are you still planning on travelling to Bishop Creek, then?”

“What is wrong with you?” Her features twisted in disgust. “You’re being unkind!” 

“Me?” Anger flared up in my veins. “I’m unkind…  _ I’m unkind _ ?” 

“I don’t understand where this is coming from, Hux!” she said, her voice swimming with betrayal.

“It was clear,” I huffed, “clear a moment ago that you wanted to use my body without any further intentions!”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you looked at me,” I paused awkwardly, “before the whole… letting off bit!”

A flash of something I couldn’t decode darted across her face.

“That’s…” she trailed off. “That’s not what you think it was.”

“Do you want me, Rose?” I realize now that it sounded more like an accusation than a question. “Are you choosing me instead of him?”

The pause. The split second of her doubt. 

It crushed me.

“I think I understand perfectly well what just happened, Miss Tico.” My voice bordered on dangerous acrimony.

“You don’t care who you use or who you cast aside as long as you’re not trapped!”

Even in the darkness I could see the blood drain from her face.

But I couldn’t stop myself. I had spotted danger lurking in the shadows of her intentions and now I was blindly turning over every rock in her psyche with defensive rage.

“You’ll use your fiancé as an excuse to leave tiresome old San Francisco but you’re not particularly loyal to him, and then you’ll use me to divert yourself in the meantime. Capital! Will you use anyone to escape your own pathetic mediocrity?”

Rose stood and gathered her clothes. Her face shadowed with pain and when she bent over to gather her shirt from beside me. I could see her dusky lashes moving rapidly to hold back tears. She shoved her legs into the trousers and wrapped the unbuttoned shirt tightly around herself.

Instantly, a dart of regret pierced my body.

“Rose.” My tone changed. 

But it was too late.

“I’ll sleep at calf camp,” she said curtly. She swept past me and started down the hill toward the trail.

“At least take the cabin,” I called after her.

“No thank you, sir,” she replied with mock-politeness. “I’d hate to take advantage of you, or what was your word... —to  _ use _ you!”

It stung. 

_ She didn’t love you. At least you set off the trap before it caught you around the neck.  _ My bitterness tried to numb the sadness trailing down my cheeks.

But Rose Tico and her trap had caught me, if not by the neck then most certainly by the heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU GUYS! Do you trust me??? Hang with me, I promise it's going to work out and the payoff for a little angst will be worth it! 
> 
> Tell me all the things!!! What did you think of Finn and Hux facing off? Did you find Hux's issues believable as he struggled to finally give himself over to Rose? And HIS CONFESSION!! aaaaaugh! AND THEN! omg. Tell me what you thought about the unravel!!!!
> 
> Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Visitations of the Dead’ was first published in 1827 in the book “Tamerlane and Other Poems.” The poem has since been reprinted in other collections under the name “Spirits of the Dead.” 
> 
> Here is an image of the South Fork of the San Joaquin River a few miles south of where I imagine Hux’s cabin at Blayney Meadow: https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/2d04f55/2147483647/strip/true/crop/500x333+0+21/resize/1680x1120!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F2f%2F07%2F3a2dec7dabdd121092c6d70c45a6%2Flat-lakeflorenc-j19u2enc


	12. We Come off the Mountain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to TWO incredible betas, @ElfMaidenofLight (thank you for all the ways you help me grow as a writer!) and @CaroHux (thank you for taking the time to help me with Español!)
> 
> Trigger warnings on this chapter: some mentions of past death, mention of past infant death, mention of homophobia.

“I can hear you out there!” Rose shouted from calf camp.

I cursed silently under my breath.

“You know, you’re not as stealthy as you think!”

“I couldn’t let you sleep out here alone,” I yelled back to her from behind a thick cluster of chinquapin and manzanita bushes, just outside the tree rim that surrounded calf camp.

“Damn you!” Her voice sparked with rage like tinder.

That was fair, I thought.

I knew I had made a real ass of myself, but I just wasn’t ready to feel sorrier than I felt hurt. If she hadn’t been sure about choosing me over her fiancé we should have never… but oh my stars that was good, my body was still glowing as I laid down in the soft sand. I could still feel her surfaces under my fingertips, my skin burning with her nearness. I flushed when I remembered the smell that filled my head when I pulled on my trousers: switchel. 

Blame it to goddamn Jesse.

I blinked up at the night sky. My guts felt as though they were sinking, plunging into the underworld and drifting across the Styx to the land of the dead. I had wandered this territory for many long years when shame, sorrow or loneliness would drag me endlessly across its listless landscape.

Then I thought about the fucking fiancé. Who was this man who made her think twice about me? What did he have that I didn’t ? Why the hell did he seem so unremarkable that she wouldn’t bother to mention him much —and yet he could still steal her away from me? And the bastard wasn’t even here! 

This brief spark of wrath was enough to lift me out of despair until I remembered how hard I worked all my life to resist expressing my anger.

Anger had been my father’s weaponry: 

anger about failure, 

anger about politics,

anger about the gardener,

anger about the his place setting at the table, 

anger about my slight frame and sickliness,

anger about me trying to speak with the copper-haired kitchen woman whose eyes shone green just like mine.

I hated his stupid blustering, his shouting and his hitting: all of it was pointless and ineffectual at accomplishing what he was mad about in the first place. Anger had gotten my father nowhere, so I decided feeling angry was not something I was going to let myself do. I learned to push my anger down, to circumvent it by controlling my circumstances at best, or to cover it with sarcasm at worst. At any rate, how could I be angry at this mystery man when I was comparing him with someone I knew couldn’t measure up: me?

_ He’s probably rich, for one thing, and he likely hasn’t double-crossed everyone he’s ever known. He probably deserves her. _

My insides slinked back down toward Hades. Gray closed in around my vision, threatening to swallow me. In my mind’s eye, I stood on the edge of the abyss looking down: I could go to the cabin and shut myself in, lock the door and not come out until Rose was gone and everything was back to normal. I could stew in this vacuous sadness for days like a damp fog hovering on the side of the mountain.

A rush of cool, clear air against my face stopped me from plunging into the abyss. My mind quieted and I could hear the sounds of night all around me.

Frogs down by the creek were singing and the wind played percussion through the creaking pine and cedar. Every so often, the distant howls and yaps of coyotes clamored in the distance.

I opened my eyes.

The wide firmament above me held a billion tiny points of light, so dense and detailed in their visibility that the belts of stars and heavenly textures glowed in colorful dimension: navys, purples, and magentas. The seat of the gods was breathtaking —endless. Ursa Major looked down at me, then Hydra, Cancer and Virgo. I spotted Leo and thought about that old devil of a mountain lion, winking down at me from above. They had watched me during better days, surely, but also many worse.

_ Sleep, _ the mountain said. As heavy as my heart was, I don’t know how I obeyed her.

But I did.

  
  


“Hux?”

It was still dark, although the sky had warmed to a pre-dawn grey. My sticky lips peeled apart in that sudden wakeful gasp, which was made more startling by the icy mountain air flooding my lungs. I sat up stiffly.

“Rose.” The name was out of my mouth before I had even fully opened my eyes.

“Hux,” it was Finn standing over me, “we’re coming back through.”

I groaned and stretched my legs; I’d slept on bare ground with nothing but the clothes on my back.

“Are you headed to the valley?” I asked. “Did Newby have news?”

“Yes,” Finn’s voice gave it away. “Señor Damerón succumbed to his illness two days ago.”

“Christ.”

“They sent up the new hire with the news,” Finn explained. “He and Newby can watch the cattle.”

“So you and Damerón are headed back to the ranch...” I said slowly. I knew I should send Rose with them. She would be safe, her fiancé could meet her at Rancho Damerón.

“Yes, and I brought Newby here.” 

“What for?”

“To look after your herd.” Finn frowned perplexedly. “I figured you would want to take Rose to Bishop Creek.”

The memories of last night came flooding back with many sinking jabs of pain.

“No,” I said numbly. “I can’t take her.”

“She’d ought to go with you,” Finn said.

“Why?” 

“Well…” He raised his eyebrows like it was obvious. “For one thing, Lil Bear doesn’t take kindly to more than one rider, and I reckon Poe shouldn’t be responsible for anyone.”

“What do you mean?” My features narrowed.

“He’s not himself.”

Just then, a great crashing shook the thicket. I leaped to my feet just as Midnight stepped out of the brush, his rider lolling alarmingly to one side. Poe Damerón swayed in the saddle, righting himself only to accidentally knock his hat askew. 

“Weeeeell, Hugs!” He slurred. “If it isn’t a fine morning to head home to Owens Valley! Oh but wait, you live in Arkansas… Arrr Kansas! Did I say that right?”

“Jesus, he is piss drunk,” I said in a low voice.

Poe babbled to himself.

“¿Arkansas es parte de Kansas? ¿O Kansas es parte de Arkansas? A mí se me podría haber ocurrido un mejor nombre que Arkansas. ¿Por qué nadie me pide consejos para ese tipo de cosas?”

“That’s mostly left over from last night,” Finn said disapprovingly. “He’d only just gotten up a few minutes before I put his drunk arse in the saddle. Had to get him out of camp before he could hit the whiskey cask again.”

“But I didn’t forget my flask!” Damerón said in an insipid sing-song voice. He squeezed Midnight with his heels but the horse had the sense to stay put. Clearly Poe’s capacity had plunged below equine levels.

“Perhaps Miss Tico can look after Damerón,” I suggested.

“You seem awfully eager to be rid of her.” Finn looked puzzled.

“Rid of who?” Poe asked too loudly.

“Her primary object has always been to get to Bishop Creek,” I said brusquely. “There’s no sense in my getting in the way.”

“Hey, Miss Tico!” Poe waved at the rumpled form of Rose as she sauntered toward us through the trees. “Hugs here says his primary object is to get you out of his way!”

A dart of shame threaded through me.

“Will you shut your gob, Damerón!” I snarled.

“Well doesn’t that sound familiar,” Rose scoffed. “Hux has a fine way of chasing off anyone who gets too close, doesn’t he?”

I turned toward her, ready to be angry, but she wasn’t quite herself. Her hair had been caught in a quick braid but it was still tangled with burrs and loose strands of grass. The petticoats and Garibaldi shirt she wore were smudged and tattered, matching the puffy, tear-stained look under her eyes. She looked like hell.

“That’s what I keep saying!” Poe hiccuped. “If only Hugs would accept my undying affection for him, we could be brothers!”

“Alright, that’s enough, Poe.” Finn took hold of Midnight’s bridle and started walking. “I’ll tack your horse if you want to pack up, Hux.”

“‘Obliged, Finn,” I grunted after him.

“¿Por qué Hugs no me quiere?” We could hear Damerón griping as Finn led Midnight down the trail. “¡Soy el cabrón más adorable de California!”

“Ya deberías callarte, estás más borracho que un zorrillo,” Finn hissed, jerking on the bridle.

“Skunks are not drunkards en español, Finn,” Poe let out a loony laugh.

Their voices trailed off and we were left standing alone.

“Are you alright, Miss Tico?” I asked softly.

“No.” She turned to me with feisty heat and wrenched her features into a scowl. “I am not alright, how stupid of you to lead with the assumption that I might be!” The pitch of her voice rose steadily until she was practically shouting in my face, the ‘b’ of her last word spat with a small droplet from her mouth.

My limbs moved slowly; my features became icy and my words chilled. I could speak crisply, the words channelling smoothly from mind to mouth as long as they bypassed my heart.

“Finn and Poe are headed to Owens Valley today, I can accompany you to Bishop Creek, if you wish.”

An incredulous look came over Rose. She shook her head, lips parted, eyes regarding me with such betrayal.

“If I wish…?” She made a face like the words were a foul taste.

“Yes, it’s entirely your decision,” I said stiffly. “If you would rather go without me, you can take Milli and Finn will bring her back to me.” 

“I can’t believe you.” Her eyes filled with pain.

“And I prefer to believe exactly what you tell me, Miss Tico.” A hint of venom crept into my tone. “Thus far you have told me that you want to go to Bishop Creek. Do you wish for me to accompany you or not?”

Her mouth dropped open.

“So that’s what you’re angling at?” she laughed scornfully. “You want me to beg you?”

“I’m asking a simple question, Miss Tico.”

“You are being hurtful —and mean.”

I sighed bitterly.

“I’ll fetch your coat from the cabin and when I get back to the round pen, you can tell me if you want me to come or not.”

Spinning on my heel, I marched toward the trail and took it north.

_ This is what poisonous people do, they blame you for requiring reasonable clarity. _ I thought that perhaps I hadn’t actually given her a chance to offer me clarity, but her wounded attitude seemed so selfish compared to the confusion she had inflicted upon me. I didn’t need any more pain. It was time to cut her out, to lop her off like an unproductive limb of an apple tree.

I would do my duty, but I would extend it no further.

In the cabin, I found Rose’s frock coat hanging on the peg next to mine like it belonged there. The sight of it made me ache. Absently, my hands dipped into the pockets. A bad habit, I’m afraid, but one my suspicious mind couldn’t help.

In one pocket I came up with dried crumbles of wildflowers and the now-empty waxed cloth in which I had given her that jerky. The next pocket had several smooth round stones, softened by centuries of knocking about in a Sierra creekbed. By the time I found the interior breast pocket I was feeling a little guilty. My fingers skimmed the silk lining and hit something small, hard and round. My whistle.

I had forgotten about it, and the sight of an object of mine close to her heart tugged at something only partially bandaged inside me. Before I could feel a gush of rawness open again, I slipped the whistle back into her pocket and folded the frock coat over my arm. 

She could keep my whistle. I admitted that I wasn’t ready to let go of the possibility of her calling to me. If she needed me, that is.

When I returned to the round pen, Finn and Poe were mounted and ready. Their horses shifted their weight, antsy to get going. Dawn blared harshly on the meadow: the pale, piercing light drew the trees in stark relief, Poe had stopped babbling and was rubbing his forehead. As I marched up to Milli, Rose scowled at me. I can think of no other morning when I’d wished more longingly to be back in my bed.

“Your coat.” I handed her the red wool garment.

“Are you coming?” Her eyes were steely but I caught the slightest tremble in her lip.

“Do you want me?”

She looked at me like I had stabbed her.

“Of course,” she whispered.

“Alright.” I untied Milli’s reins and brought them over her ears. “Do you need a leg up?” 

Rose stood next to my horse, her cheeks radiating a series of reds and her eyes flashing indignantly. She started and stopped several different sentences.

“How could…? Don’t you understa…? I want…”

Finally, I lunged forward, seizing her about the waist.

“Get on the horse, Miss Tico,” I growled huskily, picking her up as if she weighed nothing. Her face registered shock and a hint of arousal, but I ignored both and lifted her into the saddle with a somewhat curt shove. 

Veiled with gruffness, I set my features, and swung myself into the saddle behind her. I told myself I didn’t care about the wisp of black hair that blew against my cheek. I didn’t care about my arm brushing her waist as I grasped the reins. I most certainly didn’t care about the soft curve of her arse settled in my lap.

“Walk on, girl.” I squeezed my heels and tugged on the reins, backing Milli from the fence line.

“Well, Hugs sure has a bee in his bonnet!” Damerón jabbed as we trotted ahead of them, leading the way down the trail.

Milli’s trot was smoother than most, but it proved a trifle improper for Rose to bounce against me. She said nothing, but I felt myself stirring in my trousers as the jarring gait crashed her soft flesh into mine. Cheeks burning, I reined my horse to a walk.

There was a shrill squeal behind us, I looked back to see Lil Bear pinning her ears and darting her big head toward Milli’s hindquarters, teeth bared. My horse tossed her head and shifted her weight under us with a jolt. She sent an angry hoof at Lil Bear. Finn yelled as the bay mare shrieked and bucked; Midnight dodged her flying back hooves. The black stallion reared up with an indignant, high-pitched neigh.

“Whoa, boy!” Damerón yelled, gripping the saddle horn. “¡Mierda!” 

Midnight came down onto his forelegs and stole a solid nip in Lil Bear’s rump. The mare bolted forward and crashed into Milli. Rose let out a small cry as my mare’s back rolled like an ocean wave. Without thinking, my arms clamped around Rose’s waist, pressing her close to me as another undulation of fury rocked us against one another. I could hear her gasp; her hands clung to my knees.

“HEY!” I squeezed my legs as Milli angrily skirted toward the edge of the trail, brushing my leg against the tree as if to wipe Rose and me off her back. “You cut that shit out!” I hollered. 

“Damned horses can’t go on like this!” Finn yelled. “Lil Bear ought to be at the front of the string!”

“Fine!” I replied, getting control of Milli. “I’d rather be second anyhow!”

“I’m afraid Midnight is obliged to follow Lil Bear,” Poe called from the back.

“Why?” I demanded.

“Don’t you see Poe on my lead rope?” Finn said tersely. “He’s too drunk to keep Midnight moving.”

“Well if my horse’s father was dead…” Damerón produced his flask and tipped it back into his mouth. “...¡también estaría borracho!

“Jesus, Poe.” Finn shook his head. 

I grumbled, but finally chirruped to Milli, moving her to the side of the trail to let Finn and Poe pass.

It wasn’t until we had settled into a quick, purposeful walk when I realized that my arm was still bolted around Rose’s waist, my hand curled subconsciously on her hip. With a rush of embarrassment, my arm shrank away from her and I willed the traitorous member between my legs to do so as well.

“Do you have something against going last, or are you just in a foul mood?” Rose asked sarcastically.

“I don’t mind,” I said, “but I’m not especially chuffed about riding third in yellowjacket country.”

“Isn’t first worse?”

“The nests are underground,” I explained. “The first horse to walk over a hive wakes the yellowjackets up, the second gets them angry, and the third poor bastard gets his arse stung.”

“Or her arse,” Rose murmured ruefully.

“Best be on the lookout for wasps, Miss Tico.”

“If you meant that as a pointed remark,” she said snidely, “I suggest you work on improving your insults.”

An irritated growl resonated in my chest, but I didn’t have anything else to say. I hadn’t actually meant the comment as an affront but I was still mad on the inside, fucking enraged actually.

This seemed to annoy Rose even more.

“Why are you hiding, Hux?” Her voice was a low hiss. I couldn’t see her face but I could imagine the downward tug of her lip and the feisty sparkle in her eye. My throat caught.

“Let’s just carry on without making this more unpleasant, Miss Tico,” I managed to say.

“If that is what you truly want,” she mumbled.

Of course it wasn’t what I wanted. How dare she insinuate that I didn’t want her with me —in my cabin, in my bed, in my life for all my remaining days until they buried us together in the ground. Fuck.

I sucked in the air through my teeth at this thought. Why the hell was I still contemplating a lifetime with this woman who clearly didn’t want me? Why couldn’t I control the anger that was simmering in my gut? Dread about her leaving roiled against the inside of my stomach; I almost worried it would burn through my abdominal wall and spill out of a gaping hole in my middle.

Looking back, it’s clear I had effectively shut her out. I couldn’t even see her reaching toward me, waiting for me to offer an open door. I saw only the confirmation of my own fears, despite how obviously she was hurt by my glacial coldness. In my fear of rejection I had rejected her first.

Her back was stiff; she held her head high in front of me and gripped the saddle horn so our physical contact remained minimal throughout the first leg of our journey. 

We followed the San Joaquin south as the sun climbed over Turret Peak. The trees on the top-half of the timberline above the river were sparse where some winter avalanches had pushed away great swaths of vegetation and soil along with it. These pines and firs that remained on the rocky trail were haggard, stalwart pillars of stubbornness clinging to the granite face of the ridge with a desperation that I understood. The great Sierra wilderness did seem to know me, I thought. Bright, clean air slowly began to clear my mind, the rocking of the saddle settling my nerves some.

It’s strange to do the thing you love with the person you love when the chasm between you feels unbreachable. Pavilion Dome rose up above the trees to our left and the sharp dragon’s spine of Zingheim Heights on our right. I wanted to remark on these rock formations or tell Rose a story about the mountains. As we followed Evolution Creek throughout the morning, a thought or a humorous anecdote would rise up in me until I had almost begun to speak. Then I would remember she didn’t want me, and the smile would drop from my face as thought fell into the rift between us.

By afternoon, we ascended steeply above the treeline into the alpine basin of the Evolution region. This was some of the most beautiful country in all of the Sierras: carved granite cut like a diamond by the glaciers and filled with pure, crystalline blue lakes. 

At times I would feel Rose’s body stiffen, or I’d hear a small gasp escape her when we came upon another breathtaking vista. I wanted to ask her what she thought, I wanted to hear the words she would come up with to describe this wilderness paradise. But I never asked, and she never offered.

Damerón, on the other hand, was handling the journey worse than we could have expected. Throughout most of the day he seemed to manage the rough, rugged terrain until the switchbacks back down out of Evolution basin began to veer sharply and he swayed in the saddle. His body was starting to tilt to one side.

“Damerón!” I barked down at him. Poe looked up at us from the switchback below; his eyes were red, sunken and glassy. He smiled hazily and sang with an unbalanced, loopy voice.

_ ¡Dios te salve, bella aurora!  _

_ ¡Dios te salve, luz del día!  _

_ ¡Dios te salve, gran Señora, y Dios te salve, María!  _

__

_ Los ángeles en el cielo,  _

_ los hombres en alabanzas,  _

_ la boca llena, digamos: “Virgen, llena eres de gracia.” _

_ Reluciente nace el sol, dando al mundo hermosa luz,  _

_ de tu pecho nace el alba y de tu vientre Jesús.  _

_ ser tu esclavo, Madre mía, con un letrero en el pecho, diciendo “Santa María!”  _

Finn tugged lightly on the lead rope to keep Midnight in step behind. 

“Ya pasó el amanecer,” he said.

“I can sing a goddamn dawn dirge to my dead father whenever I want, Finn,” Poe said belligerently. “There’s a few thousand dawns before I join him, after all.” He took a pull from his flask.

“The reunion will be much sooner if you keep drinking like that, Damerón,” I said with a cynical voice.

“Hux!” Rose reprimanded.

“He’s going to fall out of the saddle and hit his head.”

“He’s grieving for his father!” she rebuked me. “Don’t you care about anyone else’s feelings?”

“Now that’s sounding like a pointed remark, Miss Tico,” I said in a low voice.

“Good!” she replied.

We followed the Middle Fork of the Kings River through the carved, barren granite until it became clear that Poe needed to stop. We came out of the alpine zone into the treeline and the trail dipped down by the wide, full waterway rushing with snowmelt. That’s when Damerón began listing dangerously in his saddle.

“This looks like a good place to get some water!” Finn called back to us. He was sparing Damerón’s feelings, of course, since we had been following the same intermingling bodies of water all day. I would have preferred to push on until we had at least reached the bottom of Le Conte Canyon, but the sight of Poe folded over himself forced me to acquiesce. Damn drunkard.

Rose swung her leg over the saddle and hopped down before I could offer assistance. She hobbled, saddle-sore over to the river, squatting in the shaggy grass cropping up around the banks to splash water on her face. I was barely cognizant of my chest warming at the sight of her masculine manner. She looked just as rough as any cowhand with her knees jutting out in opposite directions. My chest ached with how much I cared for her. Why couldn’t I say something? Why couldn’t I give her a chance to explain herself?

_ The truth will be more painful, _ my shame said. _ Don’t give her a chance to hurt you even more than she already has. _

I had battled this way with myself all day and my nerves were wearing thin. I was nearly about to say something, anything —but I couldn’t seem to let two words out without opening a whole dam of feelings. When we had filled our canteens in the river I steeled myself: we just had to make it off these peaks and then we could bed down. I could quiet the clashing voices in my mind for a few hours.

A splash jerked my attention from Rose to further down the embankment when a white hat was bobbing above the surface of the water.

“Poe!” Finn threw down his canteen and scrambled over to the bank. “I’ve got you, Poe!”

Finn hauled the heir of Rancho Damerón unceremoniously out of the Middle Fork of the Kings River. Water sluiced around his sopping figure; he choked and sputtered.

“Thank God, Poe!” Finn gripped his shoulders. “Are you alright?”

“Get off me!” Damerón batted Finn’s hands away. He brought a dripping sleeve to his face and stalked in the direction of the horses.

My eyes met Rose’s and her face asked if I knew what had set off Poe. I shrugged, her guess was as good as mine. We silently got back into our saddles and pretended not to hear the soft sniffs and catches of breath coming from Damerón’s direction. 

Jagged granite teeth rose up around us like the mouth of the canyon was poised to snap us inside its jaws. We found ourselves in the throat of the mountains: ahead of us in the valley the light was swallowed up by the western ridge and the trail leading down into the bowels of Le Conte Canyon, darkened with trees. Golden twilight filtered through the bushy boughs of the lodgepole pines and white fir.

“Take my coat, Poe.” Finn’s voice came from the front of the string.

“No,” was the ornery reply.

“Come on, Damerón, you’ve been freezing for an hour,” Finn chided, “Don’t shut me out.”

“And why don’t you leave me the hell alone!” The pitch of Poe’s voice escalated.

“Because you’re not well!” Finn replied, his voice stubborn and set.

“It’s your fault!” Poe cried.

The horses kept moving down the trail like nothing was happening, but Rose and I froze in the saddle as this unhinged display unfolded in front of us. She made a small noise.

“What the devil?” Finn shouted back angrily. “How is this my fault?”

“You’re the reason.” Poe’s voice broke. 

“I don’t understand!”

“You’re the reason I wasn’t by his side when he died!”

Out of the corner of my eye, a glint of tiny yellow armor flashed in the receding light.

It was all the warning I got.

Milli let out a low, grating squeal and bucked with fright and pain. 

“Easy girl!” I shouted. She jolted forward with another shriek.

“I just got stung!” Rose flinched.

We could hear the buzz of yellowjackets now, a swarm of little stinging soldiers darting all about us. Milli bolted, careening into Midnight.

“¡Ay!” Poe squawked, waving his arms wildly. “¡Están por todas partes!”

“Ouch!” I clapped my hand over my neck. A small crunch under my fingers shot another barb of pain. The stings didn’t hurt much initially, but my heart started to race with a stab of alarm.

Milli began hopping, her muscles twitching and her back rolling with jarring bucks.

“Hang on!” I gripped Rose’s waist and she clung to the saddle horn. My horse exploded into a wild frenzy of bucking and kicking, she tore down the trail past the others and sent me flying off her back. I rolled down the hill with a shower of manzanita branches, gorse prickles and rocks.

“You alright, down there?” Poe hollered from the trail.

“Get Rose!” I shouted, scrambling up the loose scree of limestone fragments. Finding small purchase on the scattered sage bushes, I hauled myself back up onto the trail. I stood and dusted off my clothes. 

Finn and Poe had disappeared. The buzzing winged terrors had thinned some, but several still zinged through the rays of fading sunlight beaming through the trees.

“Rose?” I yelled at the top of my lungs. I sprinted down the trail. “Ow, fucking blame it!’ A wasp wedged itself under the brim of my hat. I ripped the hat off my head and started swinging it around me as I ran. 

Something wiggled in my pant leg.

Jesus fucking… “DAMN IT! OUCH!” I gave my trousers a hefty smack but the creature zapped me again and again. It wasn’t that the sensation of getting stung was the worst pain I’d ever felt, there was just something about taking that much yellowjacket poison that made my head pulse with frenzied panic. I thrashed and kicked down the trail when I stumbled upon them, they hadn’t gone far. With no mind to my companions, I tore off my boots and wriggled out of my trousers as quick as I could.

A squashed yellowjacket fell out of one pant leg.

It was nearly dark down in the forested canyon, but Poe’s teeth glimmering in a cheshire grin. Finn held Midnight and Lil Bear’s reins, but he stood stock still, staring at me. Milli stood a skittish distance off, her reins hanging loose on the ground. She puffed and snorted, the whites of her eyes showing with spooked fearfulness.

“That was some dance, Hugs,” Damerón laughed. 

“Where’s Rose!” I demanded.

“She jumped into the creek,” Finn said.

Growling, I shoved my legs back into my trousers.

I marched off toward Hester Creek and pushed aside the bushes where I could hear the water crinkling around her. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that Rose might not have been dressed.

“Oh, Christ!” 

“Do you mind?” Her hands flew to her breasts. She was completely naked, sitting waist-up in a large pool. I might have known this had I noticed her clothes hanging on the branch just to my right. Or maybe I did notice but in my worry, I forgot we were no longer on the proper terms for nudity.

I slapped my hand over my eyes.

“I… I just wanted to see if you were alright. ...if you had gotten stung,” I stammered.

She made an irritated sound.

“Of course I was stung, you numbskull!” Rose fumed. “If you hadn’t noticed, I’m covered in stings!”

In fact, the image seared into my mind of her lovely nakedness had overlooked the stings, but an innocent peek revealed that indeed, her torso and arms were dotted with painful, swelling spots. I felt miserable.

“Jesus, you’ve taken the brunt of it,” my voice cracked, “I should not have ridden third, I apologize, I…”

“Hux!” Rose yelled in frustration. “Will you get out? Please go!”

“Christ... apologies!” I shrank back and let the manzanita close with privacy around her bathing spot.

I felt strangely heavy standing out in the rising moonlight, sticky from the day’s ride and sore from the stings on my neck, forehead and running up my leg. But it was more than that. My insides weighed a thousand pounds.

After I untacked Milli and turned her out in the meadow, I decided that sinking into the icy water might be the best thing I could do for both the throbbing wasp stings and my worn spirit.

Hester Creek had a few wide patches good for swimming, but when I pushed aside the brush several yards from Rose’s spot, I found Poe lurking in the water. With an irritated grumble I started to retreat, but stopped. He seemed so forlorn sitting in the pool by himself, blinking down at the reflection of the moon and picking at the series of welts scattered over his arms.

“You look terrible,” I said. 

Slowly, he looked up at me.

“You don’t exactly look fresco como una lechuga,” he retorted.

I peeled off my clothes and slid into the water with a small gasp. It was bitingly cold, but the frigid snowmelt soothed my stings. 

We soaked in silence. A handful of minutes later, Poe and I got out of the water at the same time, but both of us seemed reticent to walk back toward the others. He sat down on the soggy grass along the creekbank and without asking myself why I wanted to, I sat beside him.

“Got any more whiskey?” I asked.

“Siempre.” Poe tossed me a different flask than the one he’d been using all day. 

“You little shite, you’ve been carrying enough alcohol to fall a horse!”

“Necesito ahogar mis penas,” he sighed.

“Can’t you… you know, talk to Finn about it?”

Poe let out a heavy puff of air.

“Why did you blame him, Damerón?” The question sneaked out of me, loosened from my tongue by the liquor rushing to my head.

“I’m not blaming, Finn,” he bristled. “I… I just want two conflicting things at the same time.”

I studied the surface of the water, the way it obscured the view of the round, smooth rocks at the bottom of the creek.

“If you knew your father was sick, why go?”

Poe shifted his weight where he sat, looking uncomfortable.

“He ordered me to marry my cousin.” 

“The loud one?” I frowned. “With the dogs?”

“He gave me an ultimatum, you know how he is.”

“I don’t see why you didn’t just go along with the idea, if you knew his days were numbered.”

“I didn’t know…” Poe shook his head. “Anyway, it's no use talking about it.”

“He cared for you, you know,” I said after tipping back the flask again. I handed it to Poe. “He always said you were capable of great things, despite the obvious evidence otherwise.”

Poe choked on the whiskey.

“I’m saying…” I sighed. “I know what it’s like to grow up with a father who is cold and indifferent, and your father was not that.”

“Seemed pretty damn cold with all of his stern expectations.”

“But that’s precisely it,” I interjected. “No one would say he wasn’t hard on you, but he took a great interest in everything you did.” The slightest note of irony crept back into my voice. “Believe me when I say it was obvious to all of the ranch hands that he took great pride in your accomplishments.” I was glad Rarmirez couldn’t see me roll my eyes in the dark.

“So you’re saying the late Mr. Hugs didn’t take an interest in you?” Poe asked flippantly. 

My throat caught. Clearly the whiskey was making me far too talkative.

“No,” I said. “He did not.”

“You said he was long dead,” Poe eyed me, proceeding with more caution. “What happened?”

I looked up at the sky.

“I shot him.”

“¡Me estás chingando!” His mouth dropped open.

“I challenged him to a duel.”

“Well, that’s one surefire way to get his attention.” Poe let out a dry laugh.

“At that point I didn’t want his attention, I wanted revenge.”

“For what?”

I swallowed. This was getting into territory I never hoped to speak to anyone about, but the liquor and the heady combination of exhaustion and wasp poison had worn away by inhibitions. The story started tumbling out.

“My mother wasn’t my father’s wife. She was a servant working in the kitchens at the plantation house where I grew up. By the time I learned about it, she had been sent away.”

“¡Jesús!” 

“I tried to find her before I left for Virginia with the 1st Arkansas. I spoke to a member of my father’s staff who gave me her name, but I had no luck until I wrote to a poorhouse in Mitakaboro.” The memory of it made my stomach twist. My voice started to come out shaky. “She had died, August 13, 1846, only three months after she left my father’s house.”

“What? How?”

“I… I went to the institution, a dismal, rat-infested place.” I was sounding raspy. “The register said that she had died of childbed fever.” The pitch of my voice tilted upward. “Underneath it there was the words, ‘Unnamed Child, female, born August 12, 1846, died October 20, 1846.” The creek looked blurry all of a sudden. “Failure to thrive.”

“God.” Poe stared at the water. “Fucking… God.”

“She didn’t even have a name.” I wiped my eyes. “What sick bastards wouldn’t give her a name?”

“Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.” He crossed himself. “I’ll light two candles to San José next time I go to mass.”

I nodded.

“I would have shot him too,” Poe said.

“It was supposed to be a proper duel, but I didn’t even wait until they finished counting to ten,” I remembered. “I shot him in the back of the neck and the evil wretch dropped where he stood.”

“Remind me not to fuck with you.” His eyes were wide. “But were you arrested?”

“I expected to be, or at least stripped of my military rank,” I shrugged, “but no one bothered or cared to call me to terms for killing him. A sorry legacy for a miscreant scumbag.”

“¡Me cago en Dios!” Poe shuddered. “That’s some real shit.”

“Call it what you want.” I took the flask from him and took a long pull. “It’s over now.”

“Mira,” he took on a different tone, “I didn’t tell you the whole truth about my father.”

His lips drew together.

“He knew… about me. My father knew that I don’t —that I can’t love a woman.”

“Why did he tell you to get married? Was he worried you wouldn’t inherit the property if everyone knew?”

“No, he wanted to protect me. He wanted me to be safe.” Poe squirmed. “But I can’t get married!” He shouted, then his clenched limbs loosened and his tone quieted. “I’m in love with Finn.”

“Well, that’s quite obvious.”

Poe shot me a stony glance.

“You don’t hide it well!” I said defensively.

“That’s exactly what my father said. In our last conversation he told me not to come back to Rancho Damerón unless I had agreed to marry a woman.” Poe rubbed his face. “Dios mío, I’m going to have to hide in the mountains forever.”

“Why the hell not?” I said. “Build your pack station and leave behind all the nosy busy bodies in Owens Valley. Let your sister and her husband run the ranch.

“I can’t leave my family,” he said sadly.

“Well I have an interest in you running a pack station, perhaps if you’re tied down in Aspendell you won’t be around in the mountains to bother me with your damn banjo!”

“¡Vete a la chingada! You love my banjo, Hugs!”

“Fuck you, too.” I chuckled, feeling an odd warmth in my chest.

Christ on the dad blaming cross, was I beginning to actually like Poe Damerón?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOOOOOOO squad, how are we feeling about this update? We’ve had some heavy moments —but what do you think about Hux and Poe finding a friendship moment here?? It would take two dramatic relationships with problems to bring them together, eh? And booze??
> 
> Tell me what you think in the comments below. Or just tell me about your snacks.
> 
> ‘Riding drag’ refers to being last in a string of trail horses.
> 
> For clarity’s sake I am using the current names of the geological, water and topographical features. Many of the Sierra mountains and canyons got their names in later surveys but many major ones were named during the Whitney Land Survey in 1864. If I was a real historian I would find and use the names that would have been applied by the locals during 1869, but alas I am only a lowly internet user writing during my child’s naptime. 
> 
> In particular, the Evolution Region of the Sierras was named around the turn of the century by Sierra Club founding member Theodore S. Solomons --more than 20 years after this story takes place. Le Conte Canyon wasn’t named until 1903 by Joseph N. LeConte.  
> Here is a resource about the naming of the Sierra mountains and features: http://stagedaypublish.ou.edu/content/dam/cas/hsci/docs/Taylor,_Kenneth_-_Names_on_Range.pdf
> 
> “Dios te salve, bella aurora” is a traditional Mexican song sung at dawn after a wake for a dead loved one. https://www.loc.gov/item/raelbib000120/


	13. We Reach Bishop Creek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends! 
> 
> Thanks so much for hanging with this story! I'm going to be updating the chapters every week but if you want to be alerted when I upload the next chapter just go ahead and smash that subscribe button and AO3 will email you when I update!
> 
> A HUGE shoutout to the delightful and ingenious [ElfMaidenofLight,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight) [Huluppu,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huluppu) CaroHux and [Brit Hux-Tico](https://archiveofourown.org/users/birchwoods01/pseuds/Brit%20Hux-Tico) for helping me get better at The Grammars and workshopping the conceptual flow of this story! These brilliant humans deserve a huge round of applause, so go check out their work and subscribe to their updates!

We were switchbacking down off Bishop Pass for our final descent in elevation. 

Below us, South Lake sparkled like a turquoise gem. Had I been alone, I would have let Milli loose by the shore and jumped into the glittering waters, washing my worries and the mountain trail dust off my skin. The sweat snaking down my back seemed to reinforce my craving for a quick dip in the lake. Sticky dampness clung to me, hot and cloying.

As much as I secretly enjoyed spending the past two days with Rose seated behind me or in my lap, it was difficult to stay cool. Even now, the smooth swaying of our bodies in the saddle brought her within that inch radius of my skin where I could feel the heat radiating off her. The multiplying of our physical body temperatures and the sheer tension of our flesh brushing and crashing together all day was pure torture.

I needed the lake. 

I needed it so badly, I had switched places with Rose six miles ago so that she wouldn’t feel my need stabbing her in the back. But that wasn’t the only thing prompting such distance between us.

We had split into two groups since last night. When Poe and I got back to camp after the creek, Rose was already in her bed roll, facing away from the campfire toward the meadow. Finn still shuffled about the camp, but his bed roll lay out beside the fire adjacent to Rose. Which was my spot. We had always slept beside the fire with our heads pointed in the corner together --with the exception, of course, when we slept with our bodies entwined. God, how much farther was that lake?

Seeing that Finn had usurped my place next to Rose, I stormed toward him with no particular rational argument. That’s when I heard the sniffing and hiccupping. 

I froze.

I wasn’t certain if she was crying from the pain of her many wasp stings, but knowing her, I suspected it was something deeper. Everything in me wanted to move toward her, to comfort her. That’s when Finn caught my eye. He glanced toward Rose before he locked eyes with me again and shook his head in a tight ‘no.’ Dread lanced through me. Did they talk while Poe and I were in the creek? What did Finn tell her?

Behind me, Poe arranged his bed roll. He clambered onto the pallet and tugged a wool blanket over himself; his feet pointed toward Finn’s bed, effectively boxing him out just as Rose would be pointed away from me. I grudgingly laid out my bed with a glum ‘good night’ to Poe while Finn slid into his bedroll, his low voice murmuring something undoubtedly kind and reassuring to a sniffling Rose. I had every belief that each person in that square of bedrolls would have been happier if they had flipped lengthwise, and yet each of us stubbornly pointed our toes in the direction of the person we wanted most.

It was the same the following day. When we got up to that brisk, icy morning alpine air, Rose looked miserable, her eyes red and puffy. She chatted happily with Finn, despite her haunted glances my way, but when I approached she seemed distant and faltering. Even as we rode together throughout the morning, it was as if she was puzzling, tinkering, working out a question in her mind. Sometimes, like the ripple of a still pond, I would feel her start to form something to say to me, but every time her words sank beneath before breaking the surface. How unusual and uncharacteristic for her. It was strange that the woman who seemed to say or do whatever she wanted was suddenly clammed up.  _ Just another sign she’s done with you, _ I thought.

“Dios mio, I can’t wait until we reach South Lake,” Poe yammered, newly inebriated after he had found a third flask in his saddle bag. “I’m going to jump straight in from the top of this ridge if it gets any hotter up here.”

“That is precisely why I tried to take your liquor away, Damerón,” I chided. “We don’t need any more incidents like the King’s River debacle yesterday.”

“How sweet, Hugs, you gave my missteps their own name,” he shot back. “Asshole.”

Clearly, Poe and I had chosen the wrong alliance. 

Rose and Finn, on the other hand, seemed perfectly happy with their arrangement. When we stopped at the bottom of the canyon, Rose slid off the back of the saddle and chirped excitedly to Finn words I couldn’t hear.

“Well look at those cavorting lovebirds go.” Poe frowned with unveiled jealousy. We watched them trot happily to the edge of the lake and kneel by the water, soaking their handkerchiefs and faces. Rose sent a playful splash Finn’s direction and we could hear him exclaim with friendly humor.

“I’d rather not,” I grunted. Poe’s head twisted toward me, confused. “I’d rather not look at them, I mean.”

“Then why are you still staring at Miss Tico?” He let out a snort.

“I’m doing no such thing!” I stalked down toward another swath of lakefront, putting a clump of bushy firs between myself and Rose. 

“They’re not the only ones who can enjoy themselves,” Damerón muttered bitterly. I was a trifle concerned with what he meant by that as he followed me to the shore, but we were silent as we peeled back our layers of sweaty clothing.

I ignored him and waded in quickly, shoving curtains of bright clear water around my hips as I went. The freezing lake stole my breath. With a gratifying rush, I slipped under the surface and listened to my heart pulsing in my ears. The submerged, watery underchamber of the lake was a shadowy green world: I spotted several handsome amber-colored agates on its pebbly floor. 

Just as I kicked off the lakebottom toward the surface for air, a heavy hand pushed my head down. I struggled, my limbs darted out every direction until a foot made contact with a familiar, wiry frame. I heard a yell above the surface and the pressure on my head gave way.

I broke above water with a sputtering gasp.

“What the hell, Damerón!” The lake spurted out of my raw nostrils.

Poe was coughing, stumbling backward.

“Damn it, you kicked my ribs, you pinche pendejo!” His face was red with anger.

“¡Chinga tu m...!” I started to snap. I couldn’t really finish with ‘madre’ after he had been so sympathetic about mine.

“¡MUELA!” I shouted.

Poe stood stock still, his lips started to twitch.

“Tooth?” He started cackling. “Fuck my tooth?” 

“It was the only thing I could think of.” I blushed, allowing a sheepish smile to sneak onto my face.

“A tooth-fucker!” Poe howled. He was ribbing me, but his teasing had lost its usual barbs: perhaps thanks to my quick pivot to avoid insulting his newly-widowed mother. Or maybe he was coming to respect me as well? I let myself chuckle along with his snorting laughter.

Poe started to shove me again as we got out of the lake, but I caught his arm. I could acquiesce a polite friendship, but insipid chumminess was out of the question. 

My skin prickled with gooseflesh when I stepped onto the shore. Icy water dripped down my legs from my soaking drawers; the numbing temperature of the lake was always coldest after I hit the air. We dried off when Rose and Finn walked up from the path. Rose made a grand show of giggling along with Finn’s smiling, low tones. 

Jealousy coiled in my stomach. Her hair was damp but it wasn’t clear if she’d actually gotten in the lake. She wouldn’t disrobe around Finn, would she? Envious heat flooded my body, even as I dried off my chilled skin.

“My, aren’t they the adorable new couple in town.” Poe’s face was twisted in a sneer.

“Swift doth young Love flee, ” I quoted George Meredith, “ And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream.” 

“Dios mío, you’d better get those trousers on.”

“No, it's a poem you idiot. The shivering is a metaphor for the coldness of reality.”

“Oh, I’m sorry Shakespeare,” Poe mocked, “but it looks like you’ve literally just wakened.” He gestured toward the front of my drawers.

They were tented.

“Blame it!” I spun around and shoved my legs into my canvas pants.

“I didn’t know you felt that way about me, Hugs,” Damerón teased, “but despite my current lover’s quarrel, I am spoken for.”

“God, I truly loathe you!” I spewed, fumbling with the button fly of my trousers.

“Quickly now, she’s coming this way!” Poe snickered.

“Hey!” Rose waved to us when I turned around. I let my untucked calico shirt hang down over the front of my pants. “How much further to Bishop Creek?” she asked, squinting in the brilliant sunlight.

“About twenty miles,” I replied, wondering why she didn’t just ask Finn. “We’ll be there by evening.”

“I have an address,” she said with no small amount of hesitation. She pulled out a creased, stained piece of paper from the pocket of her linen skirt. My heart dropped. I couldn’t see the writing but I knew it was from her fiancé. Damn him.

“Does he have his own ranch?” I ventured.

“He’s at the boarding house in town owned by a Mr. John Clark.”

“Good, that’s a respectible lodging, certainly a more proper place to hand over the chaperoning of a lady,” I said, without thinking about how stupid that sounded coming from me. I was already wincing by the time the last part of it came out.

“What sort of other establishment would you expect?” she snapped back.

“Well,” I huffed, “there are all manner of unreputable places in Owens Valley, Miss Tico, that goes without saying.”

“And I suppose you frequent these houses of ill repute?” Rose folded her arms.

“On occasion,” I said, unable to resist provoking her.

“Vile!” she gasped.

“Are you two old hens ready to get going?” Poe interrupted from atop Midnight. He and Finn were already mounted and waiting.

As we drifted toward my horse, a surge of hot covetousness washed over me. I put the bridle back on Milli, but before Rose could climb into the saddle, I grabbed her waist, stepping into the stirrup and hauling her up with me like she was a sack of potatoes. She yelped as I thrust her into the saddle in front of my stiffened lap. I couldn’t see her face, but when my arms reached around her waist for the reins, she shivered.

I imagined several very uncouth things I could say to her just then, if she were mine.

_ I can feel how much you want me; just wait until we get back to our cabin. _

Or:

_ God, your arse feels so good between my legs, I want to sink myself between yours. _

Or, worst of all:

_ Why don’t you get off this horse right now so I can fucking ride you in these mountains where you belong? _

Of course, I said none of these things, and my cheeks bloomed red at the very thought. My breath came shaky and ragged as we started down the trail. Rose too felt slightly unhinged as her shoulders rose and fell against my chest. Here we were, climbing down from our hidden Sierra dream back toward the reality of towns and society and rules —yet still I longed for her with that same wild abandon.

We followed the canyon downward, adjusting to the decline from our usual high elevation. Such a descent always made my head ache a little. 

“How are your ears?” I asked. My lips hovered just above the crown of her head, I fought the need to let them brush against her soft, raven hair.

“My ears?”

“Sometimes coming off the mountain makes them hurt,” I mumbled, embarrassed.

“Oh.” She paused, her hand reaching up to squeeze her nose. “Stars, I didn’t even realize how much pressure had built up in there! I can hear everything now!”

Could she hear my heart pounding? Could she hear every fiber in my body begging us to turn around and disappear back into the wilderness?

“What the devil?!” Finn exclaimed up ahead. 

The rest of us rounded the bend behind him and came upon the Middle Fork of the Bishop Creek where it descended down from Aspendell. 

Piles upon piles of blasted granite and torn-down trees lay in great heaps beside the creek. The water ran dark brown, muddy with some enormous geological disturbance curdling upriver. Fire pits and bits of a haphazardly abandoned campsite lay nearby several violently-hewn ditches. To others, these marks on the land might have been overlooked or interpreted as a necessary evil —or perhaps even hailed a sign of progress. Yet after spending two days saturated in the pristine beauty of untouched wilderness, none of us could register this sight as anything but a brutal affront to all that is holy. 

“Please,” Rose moaned, “don’t tell me this has to do with the Bishop Creek Mine.”

“I’m afraid so, Miss Tico,” I replied coldly. 

I prayed that this fiancé would be kinder to his wife than he’d been to the Middle Fork of the Bishop Creek.

  
  


Rose tasted trail dust in her mouth. Grit ground between her teeth as she set her jaw, determined not to cry. Lilly had always been the sister who could control her emotions; she could speak about the loss of their mother without batting an eye, while Rose came undone at the slightest mention. It was the same when she encountered others’ losses, like every word of the sad story she’d overheard at Hester Creek the previous night.

She had made her way back to camp, careful not to draw attention as she exited the bushes, nursing her guilt for overhearing. It had helped to discuss this dramatic eavesdropping with Finn, although he had been a little cryptic and odd when she’d brought up Hux’s past. What she really wanted was to speak to Hux. Lilly would have said something brave and comforting; Rose just wanted to cry and hold him, and that wouldn’t do —not now. With Lilly gone, Rose always did her best to project her sister’s resolve. As she swayed in the saddle between the arms of the redheaded cowboy, her strong front was slipping.

It was too hard to think about what she was leaving behind, better to focus on the path ahead.

From the trail on the ridge above, Owens Valley looked like a wide expanse of dusty desert patched with green tracts scattered along the snaking length of the Owens River. Rose had read everything she could about Bishop Creek in the San Francisco Chronicle. 

What she hadn’t prepared herself for was the dust.

The road from the mountains became a hazy cloud of dirt around their horses’ shuffling hooves. As their string passed a series of newly built stacked-wood fences delineating the boundaries of the ranching claims, the trail dust became even worse. Heat radiated off the sand like a cast iron range oven.

“That’s it?” Rose squinted, shading her eyes in the falling light of sunset behind them.

“That would be Bishop Creek,” Hux replied. He nodded toward the cluster of wooden structures up ahead.

“It looks like it's full of sand,” she said. “Just like my mouth.”

Hux let out a small chuckle.

“Take my handkerchief,” he fished his hand into the saddle bags behind him.

Rose silently tied the creased, worn cotton around her nose. Her skin prickled; it smelled just like him.

In the shadows lengthening toward the east, Bishop Creek appeared even flimsier and cobbled-together than Rose had anticipated. The clapboard buildings lining the street were covered in a fine haze of dust. Rose studied the large painted sign advertising the Assay Office where the gold panners exchanged their glittering dust for coin; she noticed that while the reds in the design were still saturated and unbleached by the sun, as if recently painted, the lettering was already worn, relentlessly sand-blasted by the elements.

There were lights on in the dance hall as they meandered by. Fiddle music, stomps and shouts drifted out with the smell of hot food.

“Finn,” Poe addressed him for the first time since the day before. The Black cowboy swiveled around in his saddle, his eyebrows raised expectantly. “Why don’t we go in and wet the whistle before heading out to Rancho Damerón?” Poe asked, his tone an olive branch. 

“We’ve got to get you home, Poe,” Finn said, gentle and coaxing. “I promise I’ll let you drag me in there another day.”

“That sounds like a promise to dance, Finn, I’m surprised!” Poe chuckled.

The corner of Rose’s mouth perked as she observed how suited they were for one another’s faults. Something inside her lurched as Finn and Poe began chatting idly, picking up their familiar fondness as if they hadn’t been cross with one another all day. She heard a soft cough behind her ear.

“Clark’s boarding house is the next street over,” Hux said, resigned.

“Alright.” Rose’s heart plunged down somewhere beneath Milli’s hooves.

“Hux, are you coming with us back to the ranch after you deliver Miss Tico?” Poe asked. Rose could feel Hux shifting behind her, almost like his body involuntarily recoiled with the idea.

“I’ll see to it that she’s reunited with her fiance and then join you later, if not tomorrow,” he replied

“You should really consider your motivation for a long goodbye,” Poe muttered.

“And you should shut your sauce box.” Hux reined Milli up at a cross street. Finn and Poe wheeled their mounts around, their horses’ ears pricked at attention. Midnight and Lil Bear snorted and swished their tails with anticipation to return home. 

“Well, it was nice meeting you, Miss Tico.” Poe doffed his hat. “You and your fiancé are welcome to pay a visit to Rancho Damerón any time.”

“Much obliged, Poe, I’m sorry for the loss of your father,” Rose returned. “Your family will be in my prayers.”

“Take care, Miss Tico,” Finn said warmly. He gave her a knowing nod: another of his cryptic hints suggesting that there might be more to Hux than he was letting on. Rose didn’t know what to do with this vague suggestion. She let the thought fade away with the plumes of dust disappearing behind the pair as they headed eastward out of town.

She and Hux were alone.

Without a word, Hux steered Milli down a side street where a narrow, two story wooden building stood. Light streamed out from several windows, but the curtains were drawn. Shadows moved about inside. Rose’s heart raced, wondering which window her fiance looked out of every day.

Hux hesitated slightly before halting his horse. He didn’t let himself falter again, but resolutely slid to the ground, tied Milli to the hitching post and offered Rose a hand down. When her feet hit the sand, the realization that this was actually happening struck her with more force than she was prepared for. She stumbled. 

“Whoa!” Hux caught her arms. “Easy.”

“I’m alright.” She blinked quickly, yanking the handkerchief off her face.

“Well, this is it, Miss Tico.” His face was impossible to read. “You’ve come all the way from the other side of California to be here.”

“So I have,” she said, staring dumbly up at the winking windows.

“Rose.” His voice was suddenly husky.

Her face snapped toward him.

“I... “ He fumbled, struggling for words. The last rays of light threaded down from the peaks behind them, illuminating his stormy green eyes; the wind ruffled his red hair. Hux took a breath and everything went calm. “I care for you and want you to be happy and safe,” he said. “Please let me know if there is any way I can offer my assistance to you and your fiancé in the future.”

His words impacted her the same if he had heaved a heavy boulder on top of her.

Her lower eyelid twitched.

“Really?”

He looked confused; his stiff civility started to melt into a frown.

“That’s all you have to say?” she said.

Those twin Arkansas wind storms started to touch down with an unidentifiable emotion, but he made no reply.

“You make love to me in the mountains and then cast me off at a boarding house like a sack of barley?” Her pitch escalated.

“Would you hush!” Hux ducked his head, his eyes darting about.

“Why do you never have an answer?” Rose was nearly shouting. “Why won’t you fight back?”

She grasped fists full of his calico shirt and pulled. Hux lunged at her and yanked her shoulders toward him, bringing her face inches from his. 

“Listen to me, Rose,” he growled through gritted teeth. “I won’t do this, not out in front of the very place your fiancé lives.”

Their chests rose and fell hard.

“Now, you’re going to go inside,” he seethed, “And you’re going to give an account of where you’ve been to the person who has been waiting for you.”

“Fine!” Rose pulled away from him. “If that’s what you want me to do!”

She nearly hissed at him, his expression was so steely and unfeeling. A wave of sadness washed over her as she crept up the wooden staircase toward the door. She breathed slowly to steady herself. It wouldn’t do to cry, not now.

Hux was close behind her. He reached up and knocked on the door.

“Hello?” A middle aged man in a banyan and nightclothes answered the door. He was grizzled but not poorly kept, and held a kerosine lamp which cast dim light on what was clearly a well-appointed entry room behind him.

“Good evening.” Rose stepped in front of Hux. “I’m looking for a tenant of yours.” She handed the man the letter with her fiance’s name scrawled across the front.

The man put his spectacles on his nose and inspected the letter.

“I’m afraid he’s not in until Thursday.” The man shook his head. “He spends the beginning of the week at Cerro Gordo.”

Both Rose and Hux looked like all the air had whooshed out of their bodies.

“If you like, you can leave a note with me for when he returns Mrs…?” He looked at Rose questioningly.

“Miss Tico.” Rose blushed. “A Miss Rosamond Tico.”

“Do you have a room available for the lady?” Hux interjected.

“I only have one room, but this is a men’s boarding house,” the caretaker blustered, “I doubt my proprietor, Mr. Clark, would approve of lodging a young, unmarried lady here.”

With some calculated pressure, Hux was able to convince the man to let a room for Rose on the condition that she leave the next morning. Before she could protest, he had paid the caretaker plus extra for the inconvenience.

“I suppose you can’t stay here until Thursday,” Hux grumbled.

“Would you take me to Cerro Gordo tomorrow?” she asked, searching his face.

“Rose.” Hux shut his eyes like she was tormenting him. “Please…”

“I swear I will never infringe upon your kindness again.”

His face changed.

He almost looked angry.

“Good night,” he said, his lips a thin line, his eyes blazing and his hands nearly shaking with the effort to hold back his feelings.

“Right this way, Miss Tico.” The caretaker was standing by the stairs just inside the boarding house.

Silently, she followed him and left Hux outside on the stair.

“I’m very sorry,” the clerk at the counter of the mercantile lilted in his Irish accent. “I’ve never carried ready-to-wear clothing for women, but I have several lovely bolts of cotton gingham that would compliment the lady.”

“Never mind.” Hux glowered, not bothering to hide his irritation. He slinked away from the counter and found Rose distractedly toying with a gram scale. Her brow scrunched together in thought. Hux watched her fiddle with a few of the little lead weights for a moment as the scale tipped erratically.

“No spare clothing, I’m afraid,” he reluctantly interrupted.

“Oh stars.” Rose looked up from the scale. “How embarrassing for me to show up at Cerro Gordo and force my fiancé to introduce me to his partners while I’m looking like a ragamuffin.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” Hux huffed, sounding annoyed.

Rose looked up at him coyly, making a face like she expected him to comment that she looked lovely even in rags. 

He ignored her.

“Begging your pardon, don’t be handling that fragile equipment, miss!” The grocer waved at Rose from the counter.

“I think your gram scale is off.” Rose quirked her brow, “How recently have you calibrated it?”

“Och, I can’t be expected to fuss with that blasted thing every day.” The grocer shrugged.

“Here.” She smiled, “I’ll fix it for you.”

“Oh, don’t you mind, miss…”

“Let her be.” Hux’s chest reverberated like a watchdog.

The aproned man scurried out from behind the counter and Hux squared himself to step between him and Rose, but she was quicker than both of them. By the time he hustled over to where Rose and Hux stood, she had adjusted the scale and was setting two five gram weights on both little platforms. She moved back and they watched the scale balance perfectly.

“Well, as I live and breathe!” The grocer said. “She’s a clever lass, this one!”

“It’s no trouble.” Rose grinned winningly. “I’ll happily calibrate your scales whenever I’m in for dry goods!” She offered her hand to the grocer. “Rosamond Tico. I’ll be the school teacher up at the new mining town in Aspendell!”

“What a pleasure to meet you, Miss Tico!” 

Hux faded into the background as Rose’s warm, effusive charisma drew out all manner of promised favors and local gossip from the grocer. He had never seen the Irishman so charmed. With a sinking feeling, Hux reflected that perhaps he had been selfish to want to keep Rose all to himself in the mountains. As they left the mercantile, she cheerily greeted each passersby and drew all eyes from both sides of the street like a shining little beacon. Hux trailed along behind her darkly, thinking glum thoughts.

“Where’s the stage coach office?” Rose turned to Hux as if noticing him for the first time.

“There isn’t one in Bishop Creek,” he replied. “If they’ve been booked to come this way they’ll arrive from Independence at noon.”

“Noon?” 

“Cheer up, you’ll be rid of me soon enough,” Hux said in a prickly voice. 

Rose shot him a chilly glance.

“I know where we can get you a fresh set of clothes.” He changed his tone. “But you’re not going to like it.”

She glanced at the worn lines of his face; he had the ghost of impish humor curling on the edges of his lips and a hint of sparkle in his eye. A flash of memory made her throat catch: she could see the full bloom of his mischievous smile, framed in a bed of orange fire poppies.

The next thing she knew, she was standing with Hux on the back-entry steps of a large, narrow building which faced the main street as a separate business, the Assay Office. The back had no sign, but through the barely-open window sash Rose could hear the high, clear laughter of women. Her eyes widened with realization just as the heavy cedar door swung open.

“Monsieur Gingembre!” A petite, elegantly dressed Black woman exclaimed happily. She had the self-assured grace of nobility with the accessible warmth of a hostess. Rose instantly liked her.

“Hello, Madame Maz,” Hux said shyly.

“And you’ve brought une charmante compagne!” Maz grasped Rose’s hand. “Je n’en crois pas mes yeux!”

“Merci, madame!” Rose thanked the stars she hadn’t entirely ignored her French tutor.

“Madame, this is Miss Rosamond Tico of San Francisco.” Hux quickly explained what they needed, a set of women’s clothing, if they could spare it, but Madame Maz was clearly not interested in simply fulfilling an errand for them.

“Please, come in. Girls!” She called down the hallway “Rey, Kaydel! Veuillez préparer du thé pour nos invités!” She ushered Hux into a simple, mostly tidy parlor while still holding Rose’s hand. He sank into the cushions of a finely carved settee, never taking his eyes off of Rose. “Now, Mademoiselle Tico.” She fussed with Rose’s dusty plait of matted hair. “While my girls bring some tea for Monsieur Gingembre, we will draw a bath for you and scrub the mountains off this lovely skin!”

“Oh, thank you, Madam Maz!” Rose flushed. “I haven’t had a proper bath in…” She was about to invoke the number of weeks since her last civilized bath when she remembered the hot springs. Her eyes drifted to Hux.

His cheeks bloomed with embarrassment.

Maz took Rose down to a great kitchen with an enormous brick hearth connected to a large cast-iron range where something savory and spicy was simmering in a big pot. A thick, knotted table was pushed against one plaster wall below the cellar windows, surrounded by sturdy, carved chairs strewn with baskets of bright silk ribbons and lace trimmings. Above the butcher block counter in the center of the kitchen hung thick braids of garlic, strings of dried peppers and a group of cast iron pans in various shapes and depths. Jars of herbs and baskets of bright garden vegetables added to the homey warmth.

A tall, young, fair-skinned woman with patient hazel eyes and a thick rope of braided auburn hair came into the kitchen carrying a large wooden basin. She set it before the fire. Behind her, a slight, clever-looking blonde draped the tub with a thick muslin cloth and poured a kettle of boiling water.

“Mon chou, this is Kaydel,” Maz gestured to the blonde. “And that is Rey, the strong one!” She chuckled, teasing Rey as she returned with a bucket of water. “Girls, this is Mademoiselle Tico, a lady of quality from San Francisco!”

“How do you do, miss.” Kaydel curtseyed.

“Oh, please don’t mind that quality business!” Rose blushed. “It's just nonsense, really. I’ve come here to be a school teacher.”

“Nonsense for you, perhaps.” Kaydel sniffed.

“Oh Kaydel, don’t be a beast!” Rey swatted the girl playfully. “We all were new here once.” She gave Rose a wink.

Kaydel and Rey filled the basin with water from a cauldron over the fire while Madame Maz loosened Rose’s dirty braid and began brushing the dust and twigs out her tangled raven hair. Rose started to relax, feeling the stiffness in her shoulders and the knot in her stomach loosen.

“Girls, where are Minnie, Mable and Tabitha?” Maz asked over her shoulder.

“I saw them in the hallway giggling over Red out there!” Kaydel rolled her eyes. “They’re probably in the parlor asking to touch his hair!”

“Pfff!” Maz released a distinctly French sound of annoyance, scooping up the tray of rose-painted china and a plate of biscuits and cheese. “Rey, would you help Mademoiselle Tico with her cheveux?” She swept by, leaving the aroma of rich-smelling tea wafting behind her.

Rey picked up the brush.

“What lovely hair,” she mused, running the boar bristles through Rose’s locks with long, gentle strokes.

“You all are so kind,” Rose extended the comment to Kaydel, who despite her curtness had been scrupulously checking the temperature of the water. “You must be wondering why a woman from San Francisco would ride into town with a cowhand from Rancho Damerón.”

“Oh no,” Rey laughed softly, “back here we don’t discuss men.”

“Maz has a rule that the kitchen is our sanctuary from the gentleman customers,” Kaydel explained. “Neither men nor the mention of them is allowed.”

“And Mr. Hux, is he a regular gentleman customer?” Rose asked with more indignance than she meant to betray.

“You won’t hear it from us!” Rey said wryly. “You’re supposed to relax here and forget about their troublesome ilk. Here, stand up.” 

Rey helped Rose unbutton her muddied, stained clothes and let her step into the bath. The steaming water made soft trickling sounds as she eased her aching muscles in with a sigh. Rey resumed brushing her hair and slowly worked out a particularly stubborn knot. Kaydel knelt by the tub and brought out a small amber vial.

“This is rosewater.” She let several drops fall into the bath. “We all bathe with different scents, I prefer oil of lavender.”

“Stars, that’s lovely.” Rose took a deep, cleansing breath.

“Tu t’en sors, mes choupinettes?” Maz bustled back into the kitchen.

“Ça va, Maz,” Kaydel replied. 

Rey said something to the madame about the knots in Rose’s hair, but Rose was too relaxed to be listening. She was vaguely aware of the matron pouring a vial of sweet-smelling oil into her hands and massaging her scalp. 

“You’ve come a long way to be a school teacher, Miss Tico,” Rey said. “Why did you come to Owens Valley?”

“Well, my fiancé…” Rose began.

“...Excusez-moi, let us not speak of men,” Maz interrupted. “Tell me, what do you like about teaching, mon chou?”

Rose was in such a state of relaxation that she was barely conscious of her words, surprised to find her intentions floating to the surface with ease, unhindered by the warring thoughts that had been plaguing her. Rey started pouring hot water through Rose’s hair and Maz worked out the detangling oil.

“I grew up in a large house by myself. I was forced to find company in the clocks and books and other things I could study and take apart to find how they worked. I wanted nothing more than to share about what I’d learned, so I studied education at the College of Notre Dame in Belmont.”

“Ah, all the best teachers have a love not only for the knowledge, but for the learner,” Maz mused. 

“Did you teach in San Francisco?” Rey asked.

“No.” Rose frowned. “My father agreed to my education but thought it a poor reflection on him to let me work.”

“How cruel of him to deprive you what you most wanted!” Kaydel said. 

“Yes…” Rose murmured like she agreed, although she was struck by the feeling that she wasn’t yet hitting on the deeper truth of it. “At the very least, he could have pretended to be interested in what I was learning.”

“You wanted someone else to enjoy the learning with you,” Rey said.

Rose caught Maz’s smile in the corner of her eye. 

“What is knowledge if you have no one with which to share it?” The madame mused.

“Exactly!” Rose said.

Suddenly, half of her wanted to jump out of the bath and shout ‘Eureka!’

The other half wanted to cry.

Hux tried to hide his face behind his teacup. 

“But if you are not her fiancé, that means you’re otherwise unoccupied for the morning, no?” 

“Minnie, you mustn't throw yourself at him,” Mable purred. “He’s mine.”

“Ladies, et Monsieur Gingembre.” Maz sailed into the room, her fluffy crinolines swishing about her ankles. “May I present Mademoiselle Tico, the Rose of Bishop Creek!”

Rose thought a room full of courtesans was the perfect audience for a grand entrance; gasping and cooing with just the right amount of emphasis. They made her feel very pretty.

Hux stood, as was the custom. Or perhaps because he could hardly fathom the sight of this person walking toward him.

She was still Rose. 

That’s what he was trying to tell himself as she crossed the threshold of the parlor in a sunshine yellow silk faille walking dress, as brilliant as the brave smile on her face. The dress was two pieces. The top was an over-bodice with military buttons and slim, fitted shoulders down to the lacey sleeves. The skirt opened in flowing sashes to reveal a waterfall of ruffles descending to her neatly booted ankles. Her hair was styled up, with a tasteful little hat tipped smartly forward on her head and her dark, shining curls spilled down her back where a handsome lace collar peeped around her neck.

He exhaled slowly.

Maybe when he was a colonel he could have stood beside her, with his hair slicked back and the lines of his uniform crisp and flawless. But that uniform meant nothing to him now, in fact, it was a stain. He was a stain. Perhaps it was better that she was washed clean of the mountains and of him. 

“Thank you, Madame Maz.” He finally heard his voice coming out of his mouth.

“Do you not think she looks à couper le souffle?”

“I do,” Hux said, breath stolen. “Mon petit sarigue,” he whispered as if he didn’t know he’d said it aloud.

“You don’t think yellow is a little overbearing for me?” Rose asked, slightly embarrassed at all the attention. 

“Never!” Rey retorted. All at once the gallery of courtesans showered a series of ‘nos’ and ‘of course nots’ and ‘you look absolutely ravishing-s!’

“I did prefer the blue,” Kaydel said.

Rose sank down onto the opposite settee across from Hux, her posture a little odd and stiff after getting used to no corset. Rey came and sat beside her, helping herself to the tea, while Minnie and Mable scowled at one another, trying to scoot their frilly rumps closer to Hux.

Maz flitted to an upright piano that sat tucked in the far corner of the room and tugged out the wooden bench underneath the keys.

“Before you continue your journey to Cerro Gordo, I demand that you play with me again, Monsieur Gingembre!”

Hux made an injured sound.

“Madame Maz, that log cutter you have is barely a cello and makes me feel worse for studying music.”

“I found a new one in Lone Pine!” Maz sprang up and darted out into the hallway. She came back into the parlor carrying a dark, mahogany instrument with smooth, glossy wood where it wasn’t scratched. The cello looked enormous being carried by the tiny woman. She set it down in front of Hux.

Rose’s face lit up.

“My, it’s an ugly, beat up thing!” Hux held the instrument away from himself on its long steel foot, eyeing the travel dents and scratches reproachfully.

“Oh, I love it when they do this!” Rey whispered to Rose.

“Does he play here ...often?” Rose said in Rey’s ear. The courtesan returned her glance knowingly.

“He’s been collecting pennyroyal for us for years. Madame buys it from him --or she tricks him into giving it to her for free in exchange for playing her cello.” Her lips twisted in a reassuring smile as she added, “He’s not much of a customer.”

Rose suddenly felt a rush of shame for asking --hardly an act of gratitude to look down on the woman’s work. She asked herself why she felt so possessive over that fiery-haired cowboy when she hadn’t even thought to ask about her fiancé.

Hux picked up the bow and looked down its length like the sights of a rifle, then he twisted the end and checked again to see if he had properly tightened the horsehair strings.

Madame Maz shuffled through a stack of music, each yellowed sheet ruffled from some kind of beverage spilled atop the piano and dried with time.

“I have a couple Schubert, and I know there is some Mozart here, but that is too skilled for me…” The madame chuckled as she leafed through the song selections.

“Hmm. I know plenty of Schubert.” Hux twisted the large tuning pegs of the cello, dialing in the pitches with scrupulous perfection despite the instrument’s age.

“ _ Le Cygne _ ,” Rose said. Her voice was firm, eyes locked on Hux. He lifted his head slowly and met her gaze with an expression like she’d shot him.

“Oh yes,  [ _ The Swan  _ by Saint-Saens ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qrKjywjo7Q) ! Magnifique!” Madame Maz snatched up a worn sheet of music. “Here it is! Can you play that one, mon petit renardeau?”

“I can,” Hux said, his eyes not leaving Rose.

“Alright, Monsieur Gingembre.” Madame Maz slid across the piano bench and looked up at him, her hands hovering over the keys.

Giving her a nod, Hux looked down at the cello through his long ginger lashes, his left hand pressing down on the string: fixed on his first note not yet struck.

Madam Maz began the soft introduction, a rolling melody that reminded Rose of raindrops on Florence Lake. Though some of the notes on the piano were out of tune and sounded a little sour, the matron was quite good. She swayed on the bench, painting a stirring picture with the melancholy phrase of music. Out of the corner of her eye, Hux lifted his bow, breathless.

Rose was not prepared for how the first note of the cello would pierce her. Hux was more than just accomplished on his instrument: he was himself. 

His eyes closed, his hand moved down the neck of the cello with the descending notes. He drew her in and consumed her with his eager tenderness. His brows drew together as his bow struck the long, minor note and the muscle in his jaw stood out as he traced the melodic line upward into a moment of tension.

The piano melody underneath the long cello notes shifted, pushing the angst over into sorrow and it showed on Hux’s face. He had caught his lower lip in his teeth, his bronze lashes pressed to his cheeks as he leaned into the melodic strain. Rose felt her heart breaking, cracking open with the intense cascade of vulnerable music.

Suddenly he was so clearly visible to her.

She saw how his distant, aloof exterior protected a vast, engulfing tenderness. It was obvious this man was profoundly driven to nurture; to anticipate and modify everything else for the sole object of cultivating and sustaining the things he cared about. She saw the spirit of a gardener inside the broken body of a soldier; a man who had been struck so often that he had beaten his plowshare into a sword. 

But while he was scarred, she knew he wasn’t completely hardened, not anymore. Every strain of music alluded to a different dimension of his softness, and how much he cared for her.

Panic rose up in her as the melody wandered in suspenseful phrases. Could she really let go of everything? What would her father say? Christ, how would her fiancé react?

But that face. 

That damned, beautiful face with his annoying, irresistible shock of hair and piercing, turbulent green eyes. 

He had returned to the melodic theme and with it, his eyes had opened: staring sightlessly at the floor by her feet. The line of music was circling toward the conclusion, but tensely paused. His gaze flicked up at hers: asking, perhaps begging. He was too split open to hide that look.

The piano pivoted underneath the cello’s quieter, more intimate phrases of goodbye and it stopped, leaving his stringed voice bare and exposed. He hung over the edge of the penultimate note, his face utterly raw. 

Then, with the softest shift, he set everything right. The piano descended behind his last long tone, his swan’s song, like the Sallie Keyes trickling down the hillside, like the curtain of rainfall rolling off Ward Mountain, like the feeling of riding with him off the ridge back down to the meadow. Everything where it should be.

Hux let his bow drop from the strings and looked up at her.

Rose knew that’s where she wanted to be too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me what you think about this chapter! What do you think about Hux begrudgingly being Poe's friend? Did you like Madame Maz & crew? What moments struck you in particular?
> 
> The Assay Office purchases the gold from independent miners and panners.
> 
> YOU GUYS! I found the census for Bishop Creek in 1870, the year following this story!  
> http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/inyo/census/1870/bishopcreek.txt
> 
> The owner of the boarding house was really named John Clark, and the mercantile owner from Ireland was actually named John Ryan! The census also weirdly shows their net worth, which was in the thousands of dollars (damn that inflation!) The richest people in Bishop Creek were the owners of the major businesses and then the farmers, interestingly. Farming was really successful in Owens Valley and held up the community once the mining boom died down in the 1880s.
> 
> Here’s a fun article about Cerro Gordo to prepare you!!  
> https://roadtrippers.com/magazine/cerro-gordo-ghost-town/
> 
> Here is my favorite version of “The Swan” by Saint-Seans if you didn’t catch it earlier.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qrKjywjo7Q


	14. The Truth Comes to Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you  @ElfMaidenofLight  for digging deep with me on this one! Your faithful beta skills are SO deeply appreciated!!

_“You gave me the key to your heart, my love, then why did you make me knock?”_

_― Lord_ _George Gordon Byron_

  
  


“What in God’s name was that?”

Rose charged after me down the street, the front of her petticoat balled in her fists so I could see her boots stomping with all the menace of a five foot woman drenched in silk and lace. I might have laughed at the sight.

Except that I was angry.

My skin crawled with agitation. The lining of my stomach gnawed itself thin. All my life I’ve been proud of my ability to trample down my vain desires and rise above. I could have never served in the army with impulsive men like Snoke or Ren had I not a vise-like grip over my feelings. Why was it so difficult now?

I paused my furious promenade just long enough to turn around and frown at her.

“Keep up, Miss Tico, or we’ll miss your coach.”

“What possessed you to be so rude to Madame Maz?” Rose accused. “You bolted out of there like the devil was on your heels without so much as a thank you!”

I scoffed.

“Why are you angry?” she demanded. “Was it because I asked you to play Le Cygne?”

No. 

It was because she asked me to play Le Cygne and while doing so, my stupid heart was telling her that I loved her. 

And when I was telling her that I loved her, she understood me. 

And when she understood me, I could tell she loved me too.

And though she loved me, we were still about to board a coach for Cerro Gordo.

“It’s because…” I started, my tongue tripping over itself. “Because…”

What would happen if the truth came to light? What hell would break loose if I unloaded this massive tangle of feelings and intentions? If I untethered the dark and brooding beast? My mind was starting to sound like my least favorite poet: a boorish, arrogant sort whose poems idealize the most unhinged, selfish brutes guided by slippery logic crafted to justify their reckless feelings.

“Because I hate Byron!” I blurted.

Rose blinked twice.

“The poet?” she said, puzzled. “Lord Byron? Hux, you are making no sense.”

“Precisely!” I exclaimed. “Byron makes no sense! 

“‘ _ Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication _ .”

What a stupid line of prose. However dull sobriety might be, I couldn’t survive Rose’s intoxicating power.

“ _ The great object of life is sensation — to feel that we exist, even though in pain _ .”

God, how dreadfully alive I had been when Rose was swept up in my music! How clearly my heart felt every articulated stab that she did not belong to me! What kind of a masochist would subject themself to that?

Rose threw up her hands, exasperated. 

“Will you please explain to me what is going on, Hux? Why are you upset?”

I became aware of myself again and realized I had been ranting. I pushed back my hat, smoothing my hair and tried to focus on staying in control.

“Victorian poets write about rising above brutish impulses,” I said. “Tennyson described a man’s wrath as ‘like a child in doubt and fear,’ Longfellow said ‘our lusts and passions are a downward stair,’ and Wordsworth suggests ‘whatever hinders or impedes the actions of a nobler will’ must be ‘trampled down.”

Rose was eyeing me like I’d ought to be institutionalized.

“Well, thank you for the poetry lesson, but where are you going with this?” 

“I’m not like Byron, Miss Tico,” I straightened. “I’m going to shut my mouth, put aside my feelings and do the right thing. You might try doing the same!”

Her head jerked back like I’d slapped her.

Rose glowered behind me, grumbling under her breath the whole way to the stagecoach platform. A smallish wooden vehicle sat by the boardwalk when we arrived. The coach had large black wheels and was teamed by four lanky brown mules. 

She sighed as we approached the coachmen to book the passage. I hated to make her unhappy, and yet I couldn’t allow feelings, hers or mine, to rule me. This used to work for me.

But now, as I stood silently on the wooden boardwalk with Rose, waiting for the California Stage Company to unload the previous travellers’ luggage, it wasn’t working. Indignation boiled inside of me and I couldn’t stop it. I sucked in a deep, calming breath and felt more thwarted by my growing rage than by the cloud of dust I mistakenly inhaled. 

“Can we just talk about it?” 

It was a voice by my shoulder.

“No,” I coughed.

Rose and I watched the coachmen remove a particularly large trunk that was strapped to the top railing of the carriage. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see hurt written all over her face.

“Right this way, Miss Tico.” The driver wore a long dusty coat and moved with the confident dexterity of a man in his middle years. He popped open the stagecoach door and offered Rose a hand. She stepped onto the runner and climbed into the carriage with a sad glance in my direction.

I threw my haversack in the rear boot.

“I’ll join you in the driver’s box,” I grunted at the coachman.

“Ain’t room.” The whiskered man shook his head. “Your mistress’ll be obliged to share the passenger compartment.”

“She’s not my…” I scoffed before realizing that I did look many social rungs lower than her, and, in fact, our current stations were even farther apart than our clothes and cleanliness conveyed. With a growl, I grudgingly stepped into the carriage and slid across the padded bench inside. The coach was well upholstered but more than a little grimy. My nose wrinkled, picking up the dingy, acrid smell of chew.

Both sides of the stagecoach held one large glass pane fixed in the doors flanked by open, paneless windows. I immediately went about securing shut these openings with their leather curtains so that I could avoid looking at Rose. Once I had buckled closed the last curtain, we were boxed inside a dim, stuffy chamber. Light filtered through the film on the window panes, but the world outside was obscured. I watched Rose draw a streak across the inside of the glass and rub her fingers together.

“Won’t be much of a view on this journey,” she remarked.

“Not when the dust picks up,” I replied absently.

Both of us jumped like bugs under an upturned rock when the coach door opened with a burst of midday light.

“Excuse me.” A well dressed older woman climbed into the passenger compartment and settled next to Rose. She wore drab layers of expensive grey linen over her rustling crinolines and an austere, lace-lined bonnet. Her face was fixed in a permanent frown like a withered pear.

“G’day.” Rose addressed the new passenger with forced politeness. 

“A blessed afternoon.” The woman bowed her head imperiously. “My name is Mrs. Elizabeth Beaumont of Lone Pine.”

Rose introduced the two of us with worn patience.

The matron’s eyes narrowed, sweeping me up and down with a disapproving glare. I turned my attention to the window, pretending it wasn’t totally opaque.

Overhead, the muffled sounds of the driver barked at his team of mules, and the stagecoach lurched forward. Startled, Rose grabbed hold of the seat. I leaned back against the buttoned padding of the coach’s interior and closed my eyes, wondering how Rose and I were going to spend the next five and a half hours trapped in this jolting, bumping box.

Some time passed; I studied the faint plumes of dust that crept in through the gaps in the leather curtains every time the coach bucked just so. Rose and the elderly woman held handkerchiefs over their noses. I watched the outline of Rose’s mouth rise and fall through the thin white cotton for several moments before her eyes found mine and I looked away. The bench of the seat across from mine creaked pensively; I could hear her gathering the gumption to bridge the silence.

“Are you headed to Cerro Gordo as well?” Rose asked Mrs. Beaumont with a friendly tone of voice.

My eyes shot up toward her.

_ No. No talking.  _

“Good heavens, of course not!” The matron gasped. “I wouldn’t dream of setting foot in that den of debauchery!”

“Oh…” Rose looked confused.

“Lord preserve us from the accursed wretchedness of Babylon!”

“You don’t approve of a mining town, the primary industry in Owens Valley?” she challenged.

“Mining is an honest trade,” Mrs. Beaumont granted begrudgingly, “but the godless encampments and depraved living…” She shuddered. “Gambling dens, fisticuffs, intemperance and foul speech --things a respectable woman would not bear repeating! I’m certain a lady such as yourself would find the company of men given to such roughness to be completely unacceptable.” The matron shot me a disgusted look. “It is entirely improper!”

“Hmm.” Rose’s murmur flared with indignance. Her gaze landed on me and then darted up toward the ceiling of the compartment. I watched her face twist thoughtfully and my stomach curled with discomfort. I hoped neither woman would press the issue.

“Occasionally the miners come to service at the Baptist church,” Mrs. Beaumont offered, “But sadly their devotion is as scant as their attendance!”

“Perhaps they do not feel welcome.”

I attempted to shoot Rose with a warning glance, but she wasn’t looking in my direction.

The matron scoffed.

“Perhaps some might be received if they would cast aside their wicked behavior and appear respectable!”

Rose bristled at this. 

“Didn’t Jesus Christ dine with tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners?”

“Miss Tico!” Beaumont gasped. “It is entirely improper to hear such a word uttered from the lips of a lady!”

“Prostitute?” Rose provoked.

_ Now she’s done it. _ I rolled my eyes.

“Heaven help us!” The matron sputtered.

“Haven’t you read the text, Mrs. Beaumont?” Rose parried, “Didn’t Jesus tell the Pharisees that for anyone who prevents people from coming to him, it would be better if a millstone was tied around their neck and they were thrown into the sea?”

The elderly woman made a ruffled sound.

“I find your tone disrespectful for one so young!” 

“And I find yours uncharitable for one so old!” Rose shot back.

“Perhaps we’d ought to retire this line of conversation,” I interjected.

“Do not address me, young ruffian!” Mrs. Beaumont recoiled as if she had been trying to forget I was there. “It is ent…”

“Entirely improper, we’ve heard!” Rose interrupted. “Forgive me, Mrs. Beaumont, for saying that it seems your sense of propriety is nothing more than a ruse for treating people less fortunate than yourself with contempt!” 

The matron gave Rose a withering look, but she shrank back toward the corner of the coach and kept her mouth shut. I reflected that she might have done so on the advice of a Longfellow poem (“to be silent is the best answer,”) and for once, I considered the merits of Rose’s untamed speech.

Although I was completely mortified by this altercation, underneath all the prickles of irritation a small wave of pride warmed my chest as I watched Rose glare at the haughty matron. A mouth like that would most certainly get her into trouble, but I still loved that feisty heart. Damn her for breaking mine.

Rose locked eyes with me and mouthed, “Sorry.”

My eyebrows lifted and I shook my head. The slight perk in the corner of her mouth told me that I hadn’t come across nearly as scolding as I’d attempted.

Rose leaned her head against the padding on the side of the coach and stared absently at the window, a victorious smile curling at the corners of her lips. I watched her expression change from confidence, to pensive thoughtfulness, and finally, after nearly an hour of bumpy silence, to sleep. Mrs. Beaumont also dozed off, heaped in her corner of the carriage. Her mouth hung slack with snoring, somehow still able to maintain a scowl.

I sighed and tried to stretch my legs some. The reverberation of the rattling stagecoach tended to increase the muscle cramps I got from sitting so long. 

My brain turned over Byron and Longfellow, Longfellow and Byron.

Silence would be most proper for delivering Rose to Cerro Gordo. Perhaps the scuffle with Mrs. Beaumont was proof of that. I would drop her off to her fiancé as I should, without a word about our liaison in the mountains. I knew that’s what I’d ought to do. Longfellow would say that through unselfish, delicate handling of the situation I could assure a better outcome for all, like in Giotto’s Tower : “How many lives, made beautiful and sweet / By self-devotion and by self-restraint.” It would be easier for me, after all, not to unpack my whole saga with Rose: a bit of self-devotion in the form of restraint.

But still, something inside me wanted to shout at her, laying out my complaints like Byron’s Minerva. The more I thought about it, the more my accusations heated up inside my body, scorching what little tender sprig of forgiveness had just sprouted, leaving it wilting in my hands like Minerva’s olive branch, “which still she deigned to clasp, / shrunk from her touch and withered in her grasp.” This woman had loved me, tortured me, and cast me aside. How could I simply let go of such an unbearable loss?

When Rose awakened several hours later, I had not made up my mind whether to be the restrained Longfellow or the bombastic Byron. She moved her limbs with stiff shakiness like a newborn calf, rubbing her sticky eyes and blinking. Her dearness threw me into more confusion.

“Hello.” Her face brightened, warming my insides.

“Good morning,” I said stupidly, vowing to keep my mouth shut the rest of the trip.

“Are we nearly there?” she asked. She covered her mouth to conceal a yawn.

“Almost to Lone Pine.”

“And then Cerro Gordo is only an hour and a half by carriage,” she said, “I remember that.”

“Mmhm,” I grunted.

“Have you been to Cerro Gordo?”

“Yep.”

“Is it a big town?”

“Nope.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Sold some bulls for breeding stock.”

“Did you gamble?” she said dryly, casting a glance at Mrs. Beaumont’s snoring form. “I heard there is a lot of gambling and wickedness in Cerro Gordo.”

“Yep.”

“Yes, you gambled, or yes, Cerro Gordo is wicked?”

“Miss Tico,” I said, reaching the end of my patience, “I would prefer to ride in peace and quiet, if it's all the same to you.”

Rose’s voice croaked with words unformed.

“It’s not all the same to me.” Her tone edged with irritation. “I want to talk with you.”

“Rose.” I rubbed my forehead. “I’ve been your guide and your chaperone —I’m not going to be your entertainment.”

“Is that what you think you’ve been to me, Hux?” Her eyes flashed in the low light. “My entertainment?”

Anger bubbled in my stomach.

“Oh that’s right,” Rose said acerbically, “You think I’m just here to use you!”

With a stir of crinolines, Mrs. Beaumont’s beady eyes opened. Immediately, her face settled into a sour grimace. She eyed Rose disdainfully, though the latter was still focused on challenging me.

“We’re not talking about this, Miss Tico,” I said through gritted teeth. I gave her a pointed flick of my eyes toward the repugnant pile of grey linen beside her.

“Let her hear!” Rose snapped. “It seems no time is good enough for you, why not discuss it now?”

Mrs. Beaumont blinked rapidly and touched her face like she suspected she was still dreaming.

“No,” I replied in a low voice.

“Coward!”

“I won’t let you provoke me.” The words resonated deep in my chest like a threatening animal.

“And I’m tired of you assuming my intentions without bothering to ask!” Her volume intensified. 

I saw this moment as a juncture. Would I ascend above my impulses like Longfellow, or plummet into madness like Byron? 

The only surefire way to rise above the anger pulsing through my veins would be to cut her off; to avoid the confrontation with silence and the haze of detachment. The fog didn’t feel good, but it seemed better than the alternative, which was engaging that ferocious minx. Her little body shook with fury as she stared me down from the other side of the coach.

“Well?” she snapped. “Are you going to ask me about my intentions or not? Will you ask me why I kissed you at the hot springs? Why I let you take liberties in the bed of poppies? Why I made love to you by the river?”

I sank back against the padded interior behind me, wishing to disappear inside it. In the corner of my eye, a wide-eyed, bewildered Mrs. Beaumont was doing the same.

“You’re still ignoring me?” Now she was shrieking. “Do you really not want to know me? How could you tell me that you loved me and now be so cold, you miserable bastard?”

Like a sudden shock of the stagecoach bumping over a rock, her fiery words jerked me out of my numbness. 

That little lying bitch just called me a bastard! 

I felt something happen when the prickle of anger stirred again in my core: when I was angry, I wasn’t powerless. 

Longfellow might have been the better man for his restraint, but at least Byron didn’t let anyone beat up on him. Being angry was an assertion that I deserved something else, and while I wasn’t sure if I did deserve better, not being angry was an acceptance that was slowly killing me. It had been easy to detach from my anger through the belief that I was not chosen, not wanted, not worthy. It was a deathly fog that I had sailed through many times; something in me balked at the idea of traversing its soupy, ghost-ridden waters again.

I hovered on the edges of the fog like Odysseus: perhaps I could chart a different course through this pain.

I snarled back at Rose.

“I never said that I loved you, you cock-chafing slattern!”

She laughed mockingly.

“You didn’t look so chafed making that dumb face by the river!”

I sucked in my breath. How fucking dare she!

“Bitch!”

“Asswipe!”

It felt incredible shouting back at her. Hot, angry blood pounded in my temples, making me feel alive. Byron was piloting me, and for once I was getting somewhere. Rose and I sneered, lips curled, eyes boring into another. It was something of a shock when the stagecoach lurched to a halt and the door opened. Light burst into the passenger compartment like a hot curtain, blinding me from seeing Rose on the other side of the coach.

“Lone Pine!” a muffled voice chirruped overhead.

“Thank the bloody maker!” Mrs. Beaumont launched herself at the door and scrambled out as fast as she could. 

I didn’t even care. 

When the coachman shut the door, the darkness settled around us and I could see Rose’s face, still twisted with defiance. With a violent creaking, the carriage leaped forward and we were back on the road.

“You little strumpet!” I yelled. “You took me and you liked it, but you didn’t choose me! Fucking damn you!”

Her features were screwed up in a fierce scowl as she thrust her face inches from mine. In the faded light, I could see her lips, spewing with vitriol. Her eyes were dark with fury like two cannon barrels pointed at me. The jolting, rattling coach punctuated our clash of words with noises and sudden shifts that kept us off balance.

“I did choose you!” Rose snapped.

“Like hell you did!” I was shaking.

“What did you think was happening in the mountains?” she cried. 

“You made it clear that none of that was permanent!” 

“I did no such thing! My intentions were honorable!”

“That’s not what you said!” I seethed, my voice simmering with accusation. “Your crooked ‘now-is-now’ bullshit nearly broke me, and then you made no argument about coming all the blaming way off that mountain!”

“You pushed me to pin it all down before I was ready!”

“So you were ready to fuck me but not commit to me,” I spat.

“I already made the mistake of entering a hasty arrangement!”

Now that really blew the lid off my anger. I could feel Byron like a little devil on my shoulder, egging me toward the full outpouring of my festering wrath. 

“That’s right.” My ire became slippery and poisonous. “The fiancé.”

Rose’s eyes blazed, her chin tipped back in a reproachful snarl. I sincerely thought she was going to bite me.

“Why don’t you explain your intentions regarding him,” I said with a tone so bitter, I probably deserved to be bitten.

“When I really came to know you, Hux, I knew I had made a mistake jumping so hastily into an engagement.”

“Ah, so you decided to fuck some other gentlemen before making your marital arrangements permanent, how convenient!” I let out a harsh, dry laugh. 

“Of course not, you blazing prick!” she retorted.

I leaned toward her, grasping the hand rail to steady myself over what must have been some particularly bumpy terrain.

“If you didn’t know you wanted me then why did you chase my ass like a wanton harlot?”

“Oh, how surprising: a self-serving rewrite of history!” She rolled her eyes. “You were happily chasing me like a dog at my petticoats!”

“Answer the question!” 

“I knew I wanted you, stupid man!” Rose blew up in my face. “I just didn’t know what to do about my obligations!”

We paused, simply because we both needed air. My huffing breath sawed furiously in and out of my nostrils while her gasps filled the tight chamber with high wheezes. Her face still twisted with flagrant anger and yet she squinted with thought, processing what I had said. I, on the other hand, was feeling loose and flowing, like somebody had taken a stake out of my throat and now I couldn’t shut up.

“I imagine your fiancé is a better man than me,” I began slowly, “in fact I’m certain he must be if he owns shares in two mines.” Rose eyed me from across the coach like a trapped bird. “But you had no goddamn right to pursue something with me if you weren’t through with him.” I had never spoken so plainly or firmly in my life. “I don’t deserve to be treated that way.”

“You didn’t deserve my divided heart.” Rose looked like she would relent for a moment. Then she scowled. “You’re still assuming my hesitation was all based on my choice. You have no idea what it’s like to be a woman with the pressures I face!”

“Try me!” I volleyed back.

“My courtship was arranged entirely by my father. While I grew to appreciate and even love my fiancé, I know full well he would not have been interested had my father not extended generous lines of credit to get his mine on the Bishop Creek underway.”

“Oh,” I said, slightly deflated.

“I am a pawn in a business deal, Hux!” Even in the muted light, her face bloomed red. “My fiancé will provide surety to my father’s bank and I…” She halted when the carriage bucked underneath our feet.

“...you provide surety to your father and he ends up with the bullion,” I murmured. “Jesus Christ.”

The stagecoach tilted and a beam of light fell on her face. Dampness shone in Rose’s brown eyes. Big tears tracked down her cheeks and slipped off the edge of her chin. 

My stomach lurched with guilt but my anger was already rolling at a comfortable boil and it wasn’t ready to cool down. As Rose studied my face, she too seemed to heat up again. Unconsciously, she tugged open the collar of her dress where sweat glimmered faintly on her neck. My lap twitched treacherously. 

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” she exclaimed, her words slashing at me like teeth. “You misjudged me!”

She lifted herself up and hovered over me, half standing and holding on to the railing for balance. Her knee brushed against mine.

“How can you blame me?” I hollered back. “You had no reason to withhold this information from me!”

“You shut me down!”

“You weren’t candid!”

A sudden, careening jolt, threw the contents of the passenger cabin into disarray. My stomach hit the top of my head just as something heavy and ruffled collapsed into my lap. 

When the coach righted itself, Rose gripped my shoulders, her knees planted on either side of my hips. The curve of her bodice pressed against my chest. The pitch of our breathing doubled as she looked down into my face.

“Selfish, unfeeling man.” Her hands skimmed up my neck, her fingers raked through my hair. Blood rushed up my head to meet the delicious torture of her nails on my scalp. I couldn’t hold back a feral moan.

“Capricious wench.” My lips grazed her chin as she leaned in, her breath steaming against my cheek.

She grasped a fist full of my hair and jerked my head back. A wave of primal lust plunged down to the base of my cock when I saw her face: the mien of a wildcat in heat. Her pupils were blown out. Sweat beaded on her upper lip, and strands of untamed black hair had come away from her prim updo and fell about her face. She held me like a predator ready to sink her jaws into my jugular.

“How dare you ruin my life!” she burst with ragged fury. 

Her body shook against mine. Anger, desire, fear and something more intense than all of these roared between us, drowning out the clatter of the stagecoach and even the pounding of my skittering heart.

“Your life?” I rasped, choking on the angle she tilted my head. “You’re the one who appeared out of nowhere on my mountain and upset my entire existence!”

“You’ve ruined my father’s bank —you ruined my engagement!”

“It would have been easier for both of us if I’d have left you on that trail!”

“Fuck you!” she snapped.

“Do it!” I cried, half as a challenge, half as a plea.

Rose made a fevered sound and, with the noisy rustle of silk faille, rucked up the petticoats of her walking dress over her spread knees. The series of attached hoops accordioned in her fist and she revealed the base of a lacey whalebone corset over a pair of slightly-too-small ruffled bloomers. 

“My God,” I blasphemed, mouth going slack at the sight of those enticing legs.

She started to shift her weight like she was going to try and wriggle out of her underthings when my hands clamped onto her thighs, holding her still. 

“No,” I said.

For a moment, Rose’s breathing seemed stuck in her throat. I seized upon her questioning pause and reached between her legs, grasping the inseams of her bloomers. She yelped as I tore the crotch apart.

“Christ, woman,” I breathed, “you’ve already soaked these through.” I slipped a hand inside the shredded seam of her wet bloomers and tangled my fingers in her tuft of damp hair.

“You destroyed my undergarments!” Speech finally returned to her. 

“I did!” I sat forward so my teeth grazed the side of her neck. “Damn your undergarments!”

I sucked in her soft flesh so that I would leave a mark on her skin.

“Damn your father’s bank!”

She shuddered as I nosed aside her lace collar and inhaled another piece of her. 

“Damn your engagement!”

“Impossible man —oh, Jesus!!” Her head tipped back as I slid two fingers up the bumpy, interior ridge of her quim. A thick drip of her slid down my knuckles and my cock lurched against the button fly of my trousers.

“You said you wanted all of me; everything!” I hissed in her ear. “Did you mean it?”

“I mean it now!” she replied.

“As in, ‘now is now?” I growled.

“Now and always, you idiot!”

“Good!”

“Then shut up and let me take you!” Rose clawed open my trousers, tore me free from my drawers, and, without hesitation or comment, she took me.

The sensation was like nothing I had ever felt. She grasped hold of my cock and consumed me with one swift motion of her body like a creature driven by instinct. Her flesh closed tightly around mine and I heard myself moan like I was utterly lost, completely given over to her. The sound of our skin crashing together was obscene: it was blind need, a furious devouring like we wouldn’t survive without it.

I opened my eyes and looked up at her. The wan light from the dusty windows threw the cabin of the coach into shadowed contrast, but her face glowed with light. Her creased brow gleamed with sweat, her cheeks bloomed with exertion. The rising pitch of her cries answered something visceral inside of me.

I felt wanted. Needed, even.

Rose let out a long, undone sound and stopped rocking her hips. She clutched the back of my neck with both hands to steady her trembling. When she opened her eyes I saw a raw, tender version of her, almost like she was younger somehow.

“Tell me…” She sounded almost timid. “Will you take me back? To the mountains?”

I knew this was the most fragile I had ever seen her. She was certain that I wanted her, now it was my turn to show her how much I meant it. I pulled her to me until our foreheads were pressed together. She clung to me like a child, her breath ragged.

“Hold on to me,” I whispered.

I slid an arm under her waist and gently held her head as she wrapped her arms and legs around me. Still joined together in body, I stood and laid her on her back against the bench of the coach. Her knees fell apart with a groan as this angle drove me deeper into her. I kissed her chastely on the corner of her lips and brushed aside a strand of loose hair like I was tucking her into bed.

This corner of the carriage was dark and soft. Rose’s face was surrendered, her expression heavy and open. She made a little squeak when I pushed my aching cock further inside her. I fucked her slowly, deeply, with reassuring tenderness.

“I’m taking you to the mountains,” I said. “I’m never letting you go.”

She made a sound somewhere between a sob and a sigh. I tangled my fingers in her hair and kissed her, letting the tip of my tongue trace the edge of her mouth. She bit my lip and teased my tongue with hers.

“You’re mine, Rose.” I claimed the moment our lips parted for air.

“Hng, yes!” she cried.

Nearing the end of myself, I increased my speed. I grabbed onto the railing and the seat padding to anchor myself as I levered my cock deeper, giving her more, pistoning in and out with decisive force. She clenched around me, her eyelids fluttered and my name tumbled out of her mouth again and again.

“Rose!” I choked. “Oh God…” My eyes drift back toward my skill. I spilled into her, and with it, I entrusted her with longings I’d never dared to hope for.

The rush of feelings crashed over us like we had been washed ashore after a great storm. Sticky and spent, our kisses slowed with the decrease of our breaths. When at last our faces broke away, I couldn’t stop touching her: stroking her cheeks, running my fingers through her loosened hair.

“I lied,” I said, barely above a breath.

“What?” Rose’s brows pinched together. She lifted her head slightly to look into my eyes.

“I did say that I love you.” I blushed, the corner of my mouth twitching. “By the river, our first time. I thought you couldn’t hear me over the sound of the San Joaquin.”

“I know.” She smiled, her eyes glinting with mischief.

“Wicked creature!” I nipped at the edge of her chin.

“Ouch, you’re crushing me!”

“Serves you right!”

Rose made a small suffocated chuckle as I shifted my weight off of her. I scooped her off the padded bench and we sat tangled in each other's limbs. I couldn’t speak. Rose rested her head against my chest and absently wove her fingers in and out of mine.

“Hux,” she said after some time had passed.

“Hmm?”

“Why don’t we turn this carriage around and go back?”

I made an amused sound.

“The California Stage Company doesn’t take kindly to undertaking a five and a half hour journey after suppertime.”

“I don’t want to spend a minute longer down here… What if I pay them double?” she proposed with a cheeky grin.

“You’ve already bled my purse dry, Miss Tico.” I buried my face in her neck, letting the sounds of my low laugh reverberate against her skin. “You’ll have to wait until market day this fall before we have that kind of coin again.”

“Oh stars…” she sighed, “I don’t suppose my father will be offering me any money now.”

“We’ll be alright, Rose.” I kissed the side of her face. She exhaled slowly and folded against me like she was so comfortable, handing me so much trust. It made a tiny spark inside of my body start to stir. _ How did I deserve this? _

She made a small noise.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You said, ‘we,” she whispered, her lips feathery against my neck.

“So I did.” A new feeling fluttered in my stomach. 

“I like that.” The curve of her lips agreed with this jittery sensation inside me. Her affirmation made it more real and solid. Was this love? 

“I suppose I like it too.” I breathed deeper, oxygen feeding the growing feeling that was pressing upward, expanding inside my chest.

Rose shifted so she was looking up into my face. She swept aside my copper ruff of hair.

“You’re really ready, Lone Wolf?” she asked. “You’re going to tell me what you’re thinking? You won’t hide from me?”

My throat suddenly felt thick.

“I’m going to try,” I offered with my usual pragmatism.

“Don’t try,” Rose scolded. “Do it.”

I huffed a dry laugh and then took hold of her shoulders with all sincerity. I swallowed.

“I promise.” My voice got a little raspy. “I’ll let you in.”

“Good!” Rose’s eyelashes floated downward as her lids closed. She leaned toward me and kissed me delicately. I didn’t hold back; I let her kisses explore me, her touch searching, asking. My body responded with a hundred tiny yeses: fingertips skimming her soft curves, hips nudging against hers, an urgent murmur echoing through my breastbone.

“Now that I have your word, I have a question.” Her lips peeled back only a centimeter from mine as she spoke. I could feel her mouth perk into a grin. “What is your first name?”

“Oh Christ,” I grumbled. 

“You promised!” She poked me in the ribs.

“Anything, anything but that!” 

“Tell me, or I’ll jump out of the carriage and run back to the mountains by myself!”

“Fine,” I relented. “It’s Armitage. Armitage Fagan Hux.”

“Armitage.” Rose repeated, mulling the name around like a new taste. “Very regal.”

“You mean stuffy or rigid!” I snorted.

Rose’s grip tightened on the angular bones of my hips.

“It suits you. I like you a little…” Rose slipped a hand toward the still-unbuttoned flap of my trousers. “...Rigid.” 

_ Merciful God, how was I hard again? _ With a coquettish glance, her fingers darted into my pants before I could protest.

“Ah, Rose!” I jolted upward, unprepared for her grip on my overly-sensitive member. 

“Too tight?”

“Rose,” I said with more seriousness. “I need you to do something for me.”

Her brow creased.

“What is it?”

“We’re headed for your fiancé’s mine.” My voice dropped. “I want you to speak with him; to make arrangements to break off your betrothal formally.”

Her smile wilted.

“I know, it’s miserable.” I felt wretched for causing her discomfort. 

“No,” Rose said quietly. “I’d gladly do it. I ought to have been quicker to speak more formally about my intentions, for your sake.”

I was surprised by the burden this acknowledgement lifted off of my heart. The butterfly was back in my stomach, flopping wildly and with alarming force.

“I do want you…” I coughed. “Uh, in a formal sense, I mean.” I was stumbling over this new surge of feelings brimming inside me. I started and stopped several words like a nervous schoolboy failing a spelling test.

“Armitage Fagan Hux!” Rose exclaimed. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

My heart jumped into my throat. 

“I have nothing,” I stammered, my pulse thudding in my ears, “No money, no ring, no…”

Rose’s lips crashed into mine, halting my speech. I stifled a moan as she shoved me into the padding of the coach.

“I only want you,” she breathed in my ear. I pushed her back so we were nose to nose.

“Have me, then?” I asked, searching her face. My heart raced.

Her expression was answer enough.

“Yes.” 

Just then the carriage rolled to a stop.

“Cerro Gordo!” the coach driver barked overhead.

“We made it.” Rose’s voice wavered.

My nerves plunged. I had somehow arrived exactly where I wanted to be with Rose, and yet we had also come to the very cusp of what I’d promised to do for her the day we met. Surreal.

Hastily, we scraped together our appearances. I fumbled with my button fly as Rose tried to stuff her cascades of black hair back into her updo. 

“Have you seen my hat?” She scrabbled frantically about the seats.

“Behind you!”

“Oh Christ, I sat on it!”

“How do you keep this on?”

When the door opened it was like a spotlight had caught us: the sudden illumination revealed me, hunched over Rose and holding her hat clapped onto her head while she froze, arms raised with three hat pins in her mouth. Nothing suspicious at all.

The coachman deployed the fold-up step right next to the stage coach’s largest wheel and held out a hand to help Rose down. The evening shone with brilliant golden light, baking the bald, high-desert hillside with its final burst of relentless heat. The sand underneath my boots radiated like an oven. From where the carriage had stopped, we could see the valley and the wide expanse of Owens Lake below, blanketed in a blue-magenta haze. My stomach pitched and bumped like the butterflies had turned into fish; I didn’t want to lose sight of Rose in this stark, barren place. I dismounted the coach behind her and caught her arm.

“Possum,” I said without thinking. She swiveled around toward me, her smile easy and confident as always.

“You’re going to have to work on a better pet name.” Her brow cocked facetiously. Her lip trembled slightly and I detected traces of worry behind that brave demeanor. 

“I want you to know that even if this goes badly, if he’s upset or angry with you, I mean…”

“He won’t be happy,” she said, sucking in a fortifying breath.

“What I’m trying to say is…” I took hold of her other hand. “...I’ll be here for you.” I tried to project the most reassuring expression I could possibly make.

“Thank you.” She patted my cheek. “My fiancé is a reasonable man.”

The coach pulled out from behind us and we faced the main street of Cerro Gordo. I hadn’t been to this mining town in nearly a year; new wooden buildings had popped up all along the wide dirt road. They looked flimsy and thrown-together, the wood and corrugated tin erected like a suggestion of dwellings for men perfectly content to gather around their card tables and campfires outside. Up the hill, a crowded cluster of shacks blinked with cheery lights, although their occupants trickled away from them down the road in loud, chatty groups heading toward the saloon. 

A two-story lodge stood at an intersection of the street with music and laughter pouring out of its open doors. Several dozen dusty men of various skin colors stood outside: smoking, gabbing and carousing in Spanish, Chinese, and all varieties of regional American and European accents. Every shade of skin was represented by these men who worked the silver mines, and though they clearly kept to their own, the liberal flow of booze and entertainment had guided the social stream into a smooth current of coexistence. Not that I hadn’t heard of a few bumps and skirmishes from time to time.

Many sets of eyes followed us with curiosity as we passed. The female sex was rarer than silver and as coveted as water in these parts, and Rose drew even more attention swishing along in her bright yellow silks. I snapped menacingly at a couple of German miners who dared to whistle at her.

Rose immediately pointed herself toward the nicest looking building on the other side of the lodge, which incidentally also had a large sign inscribed: “OFFICE.” Dark silhouettes moved about inside behind the closed curtains covering the picture windows. My throat tightened; one of those looming shapes was undoubtedly the fiancé. The man had always been a mysterious shadow hovering on the periphery of my connection with Rose, but now felt even more strange to think about the man finally coming into the light.

“Hux.” Rose squeezed my hand. “I think I should go inside and speak to him by myself.”

“Very well,” I said, unexpectedly hoarse with emotion. My guts flip flopped against the side of my body cavity, dreading her going in without me. 

“It’s going to be alright,” she whispered, her face detecting my anxiety.

“I know,” I replied with a tense gulp. “Take as long as you need. I’ll be right here.”

She nodded and then broke into a wide smile.

“After this, we’re free, Hux.” Her eyes caught the fading rays of gold sinking behind the mountains behind me. There were so many burnished shades in those eyes: mahogany, walnut, amber.

“Free.” My mouth curled lopsidedly and I tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, letting my fingertips graze her cheek.

Rose took a deep breath and pushed the door open, disappearing into the office and leaving me on the wooden boardwalk with my heart hammering in my throat.

I tried to shake the tension loose from my shoulders and limbs, walking out toward the edge of the platform and leaning against one of the thick wooden posts. I would have found it impossible to resist the temptation to eavesdrop on the dampened voices inside the office, but any words were drowned out by the cacophony of reveling, off-duty miners.

A group of Mexicáno teamsters wandered by and I held the gaze of a broad, stocky man I recognized.

“Hola, Hux!” The man broke from his pack and greeted me.

“Hola, Alberto.” I wasn’t in the mood to chat, but the friendly teamster took my attention hostage.

“Those mules I bought from Damerón are muy buenas, no balking, bucking or bullshit.” Alberto chuckled. “You here with more?”

“No. Other business.”

Alberto switched tones. “I heard about Señor Damerón. Dios lo tenga en su gloria.” He crossed himself.

“Amén,” I replied, out of respect. My eyes scanned the road behind Alberto. When would Rose be done?

“So Damerón’s hijo Poe will be running the ranch?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. 

“He’s a bit of a wild one, no? El vivador?” Alberto’s rough, wheezing laugh reflected his dusty life on dirt roads between Cerro Gordo and Reina de Los Ángeles. 

“I suppose.” At this point I had stopped listening to Alberto, I wasn’t really thinking about what I was saying. “Truth be told, I’ve never taken well to power changing hands.”

“No?” Alberto seemed puzzled.

Just then I spotted a shape that made every fiber of my body freeze. I was vaguely aware of Alberto’s voice in distorted slow-motion. That’s when the figure spotted me.

For a split second relief crashed into my body. This had happened before: I thought I had seen him but it turned out to be some other impossibly tall man with dark, shoulder length hair and a hawk-like nose. My guts instantly seized up again as this person blinked back at me from across the road. 

It was him.

My stomach flooded with acid. The sharp smell of animal fear poured from my pores. 

_ Hell no. Anyone but him. _

The man kept looking in my direction. Clearly, I had recognized him first. He wore a fine, long black frock coat over a crisp pair of black wool trousers and a matching vest. I was close enough to see the heavy gold watch chain dangling between his pockets —just another allusion to how well endowed he was, with his massive stature, his oversized hands and the glint of an ebony-handled Colt .44 pistol peeping from inside the draping edges of his coat.

I pushed down a wave of bile climbing up my throat. This wasn’t happening. I was tricking myself, imagining the worst.

The man’s shoulder blades drew together with sudden tenseness. His neck stiffened, his head crooked at an angle so I could just make out from under the brim of his hat the twist of his wide lips.

He knew me.

He began crossing the street, claiming the yards between us like they were inches. Whatever I did, I was holding my ground. I wouldn’t let him near the office door behind me.

I breathed like drinking vinegar through my lungs. With a vise-like grip on my wits, I held my features still.

“You know Mr. Solo?” I could hear Alberto’s voice but all I could see was the man, stopping below the office platform and still infuriatingly standing at eye-level with me. There was absolutely no mistaking him now. 

_ Sick, twisted, arrogant, vindictive, sadistic, pompous...  _

“General Hux.”

His voice was still skull-splittingly deep. The wooden planks under my feet resonated with his bassy register. Or maybe it was my bowels. I inwardly checked my hold on both.

“This is a surprise, Ren.” I slid into that old wheedling, conniving tone.

“I never expected to see you alive.” 

“Yes, I suppose you expected to see me in hell.”

“I don’t think I belong in your circle of Danté’s inferno,” he said with haughty disgust. “My service was paroled after Appomattox and I’ve had an honorable career since then.”

“How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail,” I sneered.

He let out a dark laugh.

“I see you haven’t stopped mincing poetic vagaries.”

“What in God’s name is going on here?” came a voice from behind me.

Ren’s face completely changed.

“Rosie?”

I whirled around.

Rose stood behind me, the blood drained from her complexion, her eyes darted between me and the nightmare from my past.

“Rosie, how did you get here?”

_ Rosie?  _

“Ben!” she responded.

It was clear in that moment what all of this meant, but I couldn’t accept it. Like a hand hovering over an object without picking it up, my brain refused to apprehend the truth. In my numb haze I barely absorbed that Ren had leaped onto the platform, arms outstretched toward my Rose. When he swept her off the wooden planks, the beast inside me woke up.

“Put her down!” I had forgotten just how fiercely the rabid dog could bark.

Both Ren and Rose looked startled.

“What the devil are you doing here?” Surprise stained Ren’s cheeks a resentful red.

“I’m here for her,” I replied, unflinching.

“Ben.” Rose wriggled out of his grasp. “We need to talk.”

Ren kept a protective hand on her shoulder, his thick arm like a wall between us. “Is this man giving you trouble?”

“No!” Rose struggled to speak. “Ben, I…”

“She’s with me, and we’re going!” I lunged past his looming form, reaching wildly to snatch at Rose’s hand.

“You?” Ren’s voice shook the mountain and I felt the tectonic plates of my mind shift and click together.

_ Of course it was him.  _

“Rose.” Betrayal clawed at my throat. “Are you engaged to this man?”

“You know him?” 

It might have only been a second, but the three of us paused in confusion. It was sheer pride that kept me standing upright when the waves of nausea, worse than undercooked venison, made me want to fold in half. In a moment of gritty irony I mused that anything I ralphed onto the boardwalk would be preferable to the horrible things this man could dredge up about me. Oh God. 

“Rosie,” he turned toward her, as if to block me out. His tone was gentle, like nothing I’d ever heard from him. “I’m glad you’re here, I missed you.”

It made me sick, the way he touched her cheek.

“When you didn’t write back I decided to come to Bishop Creek on my own,” Rose’s voice sounded shaky, the crease of her brow told me that she was scrambling for what to say. “I’m here to discuss with you… the details of the engagement. Can we talk in your office?” 

“Details,” Ren repeated absently. His gaze drifted toward me and I could feel his wrath start to simmer. “Why don’t we get you a room at the lodge, Rosie? We can discuss the details over dinner.”

The back of my neck prickled with warning.

“No,” I interjected. “Miss Tico will say her piece and then we’re leaving!”

“Why is this person here, Rosie?” Ren’s gaze locked on to her. His tone was calm, yet, having ridden and fought with this man for four years, I could detect the unstable energy vibrating just under the surface.

Rose grasped for words.

“How do you know Hux?” she asked carefully.

“He fought in the war with me. He was a colonel in the Army of Tennessee, just like me.”

“General?” Rose’s face shifted toward mine with a look of surprise. Dread clanged in my ears.

“But he didn’t serve out his parole like I did, do you want to know why?”

“Stop, Ren!” I snarled, my stomach churning. 

“It’s because he was executed for war crimes.”

“What?” Rose’s hurt and disbelief cut me like a knife.

“In 1864, a lily-livered Judas in our ranks gave General William Tecumsah Sherman of the Union Army the names of Confederate families running supplies to the army. Sherman ran a terror campaign between Atlanta and Savannah, murdering and looting as he went. He strung up civilians —women and children, Rosie.”

“That can’t be true!” She pushed him away. “Hux, what is he saying?”

“Tell her, Hux. Tell her what a two-faced, turncoat murderer you are.”

I sucked in hot, dusty air. Perhaps it was time to find out what would happen if the truth came to light.

“It was me,” I said, determined not to hide from her any longer.

Rose’s face melted into horror.

“I’m the spy.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *SUPER IMPORTANT NOTE* Most historians today agree that Sherman’s March to the Sea did NOT claim a large number of civilian casualties, but many southern Confederates claimed this to be true, and this idea has become popularized in literature, such as the depiction of Atlanta burning in “Gone With the Wind.” 
> 
> History is really complex and often hinges on who’s recounting the events. What seems clear, through material I could find that referenced primary source documents, is that with the full support of the US Government, Sherman took a ‘scorched earth’ approach to his movement of troops through Georgia beginning in Atlanta, November 1864. Sherman’s men were officially not supposed to kill any civilians, and the deaths that are officially recorded were secondary, related to fires or ricochet from skirmishes. Because the ‘bummers’ who went out and foraged the countryside for goods and did not bring back documented records of their activities, it’s tough to say exactly what went down. Civilian accounts are often intense, depicting destructive raids in which women were sexually assaulted and people died in burning houses. 
> 
> What seems to be true is that Sherman was waging a psychological war on the South, in his letter to Chief of Staff Henry Hacket he said, “We are not only fighting armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies.” It made sense that southerners would start to fictionalize the events of Sherman’s March, because Sherman was trying to compel Confederate soldiers to desert their regiments and come home to protect their families. There is no physical record, however, of orders to kill anyone.
> 
> The important distinction to make, I think, is that there is a politically-motivated, fictionalized version of these events, and that’s not what I’m trying to promote here. People from the south, especially those connected to the war like Hux and Ben would have most likely believed the most violent versions of these events. Ben can still make Hux believe he’s responsible for thousands of fictional deaths, even though it was probably more in the hundreds.
> 
> Fagan is the middle name I’ve given Hux for this story as a nod to the real commander of the 1st Arkansas Infantry Regiment, James F. Fagan. Obviously anyone who served as a Confederate was not making a morally good choice, and I don’t support them. Fagan actually did clash with General Braxton Bragg (my Snoke insert) and after he served his parole, he was later appointed U.S. Marshal under Ulysses S. Grant. 
> 
> Here is a map of Cerro Gordo: https://images.app.goo.gl/4wjnK97aJedLiC217  
> And here is another great article with some good pictures!  
> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/07/19/photos-california-ghost-town-cerro-gordo-sells-for-1point4-million.html
> 
> A Teamster is a person who drives a mule team, which was the primary method of transporting silver. 
> 
> El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Ángeles is the original name for good ol’ LA. Now you can think about that every time you see one of those hats.
> 
> You guys, tell me everything. It seriously is wonderful to read your thoughts!


	15. I Do Believe I Did this to Myself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY, [@ElfMaidenofLight!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/pseuds/ElfMaidenOfLight) Thank you and [@caramel_sins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caramel_sins/pseuds/caramel_sins) for beta-ing this chapter, everybody, you've got to check out these genius humans' work, especially their Ginger Rose Kink Weeks content: UTTERLY brilliant!

My eyes stung from the acrid haze.

Acres of cotton were still ablaze when we marched up, but the house had long collapsed; its splintered walls blackened like jagged bones jutting up into the sky. Smoke belched from the wreckage of the barn, storehouses and other smoldering agricultural buildings. 

“Search for supplies.” I covered my nose and mouth with the sleeve of my grey uniform. “Bring any…” I coughed. “Bring anyone left to me.”

The 1st Arkansas Infantry Regiment and the rest of our flank were a day behind the main body of Confederate forces; we were greatly weakened after being pushed out of Tennessee and our numbers had been heavily reduced. The men were desperate for food, but Sherman had left nothing in his wake. 

Not metaphorically nothing. Quite literally nothing.

“Sherman, that shite-licking, yellow-bellied criminal!” Captain Mitaka stomped on a burning ember. “How does he know? How does he always know who’s behind our supply line?” 

“He’s just destroying anything he can find,” I said. Guilt curled in my stomach.

Mitaka shakes his head.

“Thousands of acres of crops, General, they’re torched. Train depots and supply warehouses destroyed. Livestock stolen or gunned down. Sherman’s bummers take what they can carry and annihilate the rest!”

“I’m aware of the losses, Captain!” I snarled. “I’m doing everything in my power to bring about an end to this quickly!”

At least, that’s what Sherman had promised me. He said he didn’t need my numbers or positions; he was going to end this in one broad stroke. That’s all I wanted. I didn’t care if the Union won, I needed Kylo Ren to lose.

“No civilians, sir,” the major reported. His face flashed with a look of pure revulsion.

“What was that, Major?” I snapped, my nerves already worn thin.

“Nothing, sir.” His eyes widened. “It’s only…”

“Speak up, Major!”

“The captain found bodies, sir.”

“Bodies?” 

“Yes sir.” The major’s face dropped. “The house.”

I launched myself toward the smoldering house. Charging up the steps, I kicked aside a fallen stovepipe and scrambled through the wreckage toward a detachment of my men standing in a nervous huddle. 

Since my meeting with him, I had heard things about General Sherman, things I didn’t want to believe were true. Surely the rumors were slander and defamation to justify the Confederate cause. Sherman told me he would use the information to shut off supply lines, he said his intent was to drive Confederate soldiers back home to their families. He had promised he wouldn’t… That president of his would never allow him to…?

“Oh God, no.” 

My knees hit the scorched plaster subfloor.

It had been the butler’s pantry. I knew it had, from the piles of warped silver and melted serviceware. In this room, the enslaved butler would have served the plantation owner’s family every day and then rolled out his sleeping pallet right there on the floor, every night.

And now there he was, a giant, large-framed, charred remnant, sheltering two smaller bodies. Bits of his butler’s uniform clung to his sunken form. His knees were drawn up under the two little shapes nestled against him, an arm slung protectively across their scorched rib cages. Not much identified the smaller bones: traces of fabric and flesh, wisps of hair that clung to their skulls. Several other remains were visible underneath parts of the collapsed wall, but I could not take my eyes off the sorrowful three.

One of the men behind me retched.

Nearly five years of constant bloodshed, of festering bodies piled up in redoubt after redoubt, and still, this was the most horrible thing I had ever seen.

_ You did this. _

It wasn’t just a burst of my usual self-loathing tearing through my stomach, it was real, gut-wrenching guilt.

I did this.

***

“Look at me, Rosie.” Ren held up his hands imploringly. “I have never lied to you about my past. I told you about my role in the war and how I’ve put it behind me.”

“Ben…” Rose was shaking. “I came to find you so we could talk, I’m here with Hux!” She had started to shrink backward toward the office door and now stood off-balance like someone struggling to keep steady aboard the deck of a pitching ship.

“What do you know about this man, Rosie?” her fiancé pleaded. “If he cares for you, why would he keep something so terrible from you? What else is he hiding?”

My blood ran hot.

“You know nothing about me, Ren!” I snapped. “All you have are arrogant presumptions!”

“Hux!” Rose let out an injured reprimand.

The tall, dark-haired businessman shifted his expression. Like swapping masks in a Greek play, his tenderness for Rose melted into contempt as he turned to face me.

“I know civilians died because of your cowardice!” he growled. “Entire towns are still drowning in poverty and starvation!”

“That shouldn’t have happened!” I shot back. Doubt crept underneath my resolve.

“Please!” Rose reached and clung to her fiancé’s arm. “Don’t…”

“How dare you show your face again after what you’ve done!” Ren stepped between me and Rose, his long black frock coat hung like a curtain, hiding her.

“What I’ve done?” I laughed coldly. “Oh no, Ren. I’m not alone in my misdeeds. Your insolent recklessness destroyed thousands of lives —entire regiments of soldiers, mowed down because your blind ego wouldn’t let you think strategically!”

“I faced the consequences of the war, Hux!” Ren pointed an accusing finger at me. “You ran away! You deserved to die for the lives you spent in your relentless pursuit of power!”

Quick as lightning, his hand flashed behind the depths of his coat and reappeared with his Colt .44, its oiled barrel glinting in the falling light. I was vaguely aware of yanking out my Bowie knife. Air hissed from between my teeth, of course Ren would have one up on me. Capital.

“Stop, please!” Rose scrambled around Ren and stood in between us. Her breath came quick through flared nostrils; she wore a look of fear twisted up with disgust. “Hux! Ben! This is pointless!”

“Rosie!” Ren’s voice dipped into sincere alarm. “I need you to stay away from this animal, he’s not to be trusted!”

Disbelief marked her face as she looked at me, confusion wild in her eye like a feral horse.

“You know that’s not true,” I said in a low voice. “Come with me, Rose.”

“What the hell is all this, Hux?” She whispered loudly enough so I could hear. Her eyes stung with tears.

“He’s a liar!” Ren barked. “You can’t listen to him, Rosie!”

“And he’s deranged!” I snapped back, grasping hold of Rose’s wrist. “We’re leaving!”

The shot fired so quickly, I could barely flinch as the bullet whistled past my ear. My pulse spiked and I yanked Rose against me out of instinct. Fury ripped through me.

“You bloody lunatic!” I exploded. “You nearly hit Rose!”

“Traitor!” Ren bellowed. “Get your filthy, murdering hands off of my fiancee!”

“She goes with me, Ren!”

“No, stop this! Both of you!” Rose pulled back and jerked her wrist out of my hand. “Will nobody listen to what I have to say?

Ren and I yelled at the same time.

“This man has had it out for me since the beginning!”

“He just shot at you, Rose!”

Ignoring her, Ren trained a bitter glare at me and cocked his revolver. The chamber of his Colt rotated and clicked into place. He pointed the weapon at me.

“Don’t do this, Ben!” Rose wailed, starting toward him.

“Stay back, Rose!” I belted.

My stance widened, my breathing slowed; how easily my training came back to me as I stared down the barrel of my enemy.

“Well if General Pryde wasn’t able to carry out your sentence, then I suppose it is my duty to dispatch justice!”

“No!”

Another deafening discharge of the revolver wiped out all sound of Rose’s scream. I was already dropping, counting on the recoil of his weapon to work in my favor as I twisted to the right. Stupid Ren was still too emotional to calibrate his shot. I hit the dirt with my shoulder and scrambled hastily to my feet. My adversary was cussing furiously, jamming ammunition into the chambers of his Colt, and I saw an opportunity to draw Ren and all his madness away from Rose.

I sprinted several yards down the road, now hemmed with spectators. I shouted at him, voice dripping with mockery.

“What’s the matter, Ren, can’t properly carry out an execution? What a sorry addition to your other failures!”

This time, the bullet clipped the top of my shoulder and bucked back, letting out a yelp. For a moment, I stoically resisted the urge to acknowledge the raw, burning sensation, then I decided to make a show of clapping my hand over the blooming red stain, playing it like a mother Killdeer bird to lead Ren away from my nest with a broken wing. I still needed to get him away from Rose.

“Is that all you’ve got?” I taunted. “It would be a pity if your aim had degenerated to such low standards, my dear Kylo.” 

When I looked up, my chest tore apart. I saw Rose throwing her weight against Ren’s arm; could hear the betrayed pitch of her voice. The catch of her sobs melted me. Her heart was breaking. Dizziness rushed to my head and I wondered if that last bullet had punctured more than just skin.

For a moment, I watched Ren stop. Even through his rage, he too could hear Rose’s pain. His shaggy head swung back and I was almost sure I detected regret in the stoop of his shoulders. I considered for a moment if he could be reasoned with, if he might actually listen to Rose. Then, with a clench of hate, I realized that his response to Rose came at my expense. Only one of us could walk away with her.

“Leave her!” I cried. “Come and kill me, Ren! If you’re man enough!”

The words had the desired effect. When he swiveled back around, I saw snarling back at me the oversized, juvenile prick I knew. 

_ Ah, there you are, General Ren. _ I smiled smugly to myself. “Oh, shit!” I leaped sideways to miss the whizzing lead of Ren’s bullet.

I turned tail and scrambled down the road, running in a zigzag as the bullets slammed into the dirt, flinging up skirts of dust where I had been only moments before. I heard cheers and whoops along the boardwalk; Alberto’s voice found my ear.

“ ¡Vamos, Hux!”

_ Jesus, do they think this is a show? _

Throwing a glance over my shoulder, I could see Ren’s coat fanning out behind him as his impossibly large feet pounded the dust in pursuit. With a jolt of bile burning the back of my throat, I wondered if he had indulged in the same pleasures I had with Rose. 

_ “I’ve taken some liberties.” _

Oh my fucking God.

These chilling thoughts were shoved into my ‘fret over this later’ box as I ran up the hill away from the miner’s cabins and up toward the shadowed outline of mining equipment lining the trail ahead. A long, snake-like sluice sloped down the hill beside the road, an aqueduct for pushing dirt out of the mine, its brand new aluminium structure glinted cruelly and I heard a bullet ricochet off the metal. Steel tracks intersected with my path and I veered onto them, my boots hammering the wooden planks.

“How long have you been looking for me, Hux?” Ren’s animal snarls reached my ears. “How long has your revenge festered in that sick, twisted mind?”

_ Ren must think I’m obsessed with him. _ I wanted to scoff at this thought.

My eyes raked the mining infrastructure spread across the sandy hillside. There was a hydraulic bucket bailer for dredging out the mine: a long loop of chains suspended on wooden stilts that marched up the hill between the sluice and the dark, yawning mouth of the silver mine. Thinking quickly, I scrambled up to the steam-powered engine and cranked the handle. The machine coughed and sputtered, kicking on with a belch of black exhaust. The chains of the bailer began to rotate, without the weight of hanging buckets of silty water, the empty hooks zipped quickly up toward the mine. I had absolutely no use for this, strategically speaking, but it was fucking with Ren’s head.

“What are you doing!” he bawled over the kachunk-kachunk of the bailer.

I followed the tracks up the slope, slipping on loose rock. A bullet whizzed in front of my nose and sank into the wooden post beside me. That one was too blaming close.

At the top of the hill, the gaping jaws of the mine howled with icy dread. Cold, fetid air slipped from its depths and laced about me like tendrils of wraith-fingers, beckoning me down to Sheol. I bit back a moan and darted inside the cavern. Several yards within the veil of darkness, I spotted a wooden mine car poised neatly on the tracks. It was empty and slid fluidly on the steel runners. I crouched behind it, listening under the clatter of bailer chains chugging along overhead.

The crunch of Ren’s boots on the gravel was the first sound. Then, his hoarse, ragged breathing echoed just inside the entrance of the mine. A click-click of a rotating cylinder, the cock of a hammer, the bullish exhales of a man scorned. Every sound, every bit of information he gave to me, I measured. I triangulated exactly where he stood; I was patient, always patient.

I felt his hatred wind up like a spring; his footsteps fell purposefully down the corridor of the mine and I lashed out at him like a rattler. I dug my heels into the track and shoved the mine car with all my might, my racing pulse dulling the stinging, piercing protest of my bleeding shoulder. The well-oiled trolley shot down the tracks, bullet-fast for its weightlessness and deadly for its speed. 

Ren shouted, but I did not hear the sickening crunch of iron and flesh. The revolver burst with a deafening crack. A hot lead pill screamed past me in the darkness.

“You can’t hide from me, traitor!” His words spat like a slobbering, snapping mongrel. 

“Oh, but I can.” I angled my face upward and projected my voice to obscure the sound of my exact location. My low, snake-like tones saturated the dead air of the mine like poison. “Clearly, I’ve come to the other side of the country just to torment you. Surely, I must hold all the cards.”

“You think by taking Rose you’ll have your vengeance.” Ren’s footsteps slowly scraped the crumbled earth. “Well, we’ll see how that turns out. She’s not a plaything to be snatched away!”

The stab of Rose’s name on his lips gave way to the smallest flicker of agreement. I knew exactly what he meant: Rose would never be party to someone’s petty revenge plot.

“All I want is for you to lose, Ren,” I prodded him. I heard his revolver cock but I’d have to dig deeper to get him to waste another bullet. “I’ve been watching you.” I swallowed, creeping backward down the tunnel. “You felt it, didn’t you?”

“You’re insane!” he blustered.

“I watched you and your speculative little mines; it’s all a bloated overreach isn’t it?” I guessed, completely bluffing. “You’re in debt, Ren!”

“The fuck if it matters to you, slithering snake!” He yelled into the darkness, following his words with two blasts of his weapon, one after the other. The bullets pinged off the other side of the cavern.

I filled my lungs with cold air. “Your pig-headed ambition has driven you too far!” I snarled. “So far, in fact, that you had to go crawling to Mr. Tico in San Francisco!”

“You know nothing about that!” Ren bayed.

“I know you made a promise to Rose that you’re not particularly anxious to keep! You left her waiting in San Francisco!” I shouted, forgetting my manipulation for a moment.

“My marriage is nobody’s concern but my own!”

“You hurt her!” I blurted, feeling my own rage spill like the hot, sticky drip of blood running down my chest over my heart.

Ren paused, his mind almost audibly whirring. I bit my cheek hard. Fuck if I hadn’t just tipped my hand.

“Why the hell would you actually care?” he asked slowly.

“Your engagement is a sham for money!” I snapped, slinking backward, my flesh dragging and catching against the side of the cold, jutting tunnel. I grasped for something to set him off again. “Your mine wouldn’t open unless you ensnared some rich man’s daughter! What a pity, you never could pull off anything on your own.”

“Why...” Ren’s wild, frothing anger stilled. His voice was lower, his bassy register shaking the square-set timber holding up the cave walls. “Why would Armitage Hux care how my fiancee feels,” he ruminated.

Ren’s footsteps rang in the inky blackness. He was getting closer, his heavy breaths wet and cloying in the damp stillness.

I flew backward, timing my light steps with the clinking chug of the moving bucket bailer chains.

“I thought you were just manipulating her to get to me, but that’s not the whole story, is it?” Ren’s voice was the rattle of Cerebus, the scenting, chasing, jugular-ripping of a hell-hound. “You want her.”

Thick air sawed in and out of my mouth but failed to stir my blood. I froze against the side of the mine. Ren’s revolver clicked into ready again.

A low, seething chuckle bounced off the granite walls.

“You thought you could stab me in the back by taking my woman,” he said. I could hear in his voice the curl of loathing on his lip. “But it’s you who’s lost, Hux. Rose is mine.”

Ice slid through my veins.

“I signed the engagement contract with the church like the man of good breeding I am. I cashed in her dowry.” Ren was getting closer. “I just finished building her a house in Aspendell  — biggest in town.”

All of me was qualissifying into a stagnant patch of wetness in this dark corner of Hades.

“She loves me,” he said sneeringly. “I have dozens of letters to prove it.”

I closed my eyes and willed myself to be swallowed up by a crack in the earth.

“I bedded her.”

My breathing stopped. 

“She is an absolute delight, Hux. A dream.”

The deep furnace inside my body sparked and flickered. The flame caught; I felt heat start to rise inside me, a wild rush; an inferno.

“Land sakes if that’s why she came to find me…” Ren paused like he had a new idea. “I must have knocked her up!”

Fire licked the edges of my vision. The tunnel started to tilt under my feet.  _ No. _

“Now how would you like that, Hux? To run off with my girl  — just to find she’s got a belly full of me already!”

Wrath burst from the pit of my stomach and thundered out in a gritty roar.

I sprang from my hiding place brandishing my knife, slashing wildly in the dark. My frame collided with Ren before my weapon did and he grabbed my knife hand with his doubly-powerful grip. A grating sound came from him as he pushed my blade toward me, it took all of my strength to strain against him. Twelve inches, ten inches, six inches, the sharp point crept toward my ribs.

Twisting, I pivoted my weight and freed my arm. I had heard his gun skitter off across the cavern floor, but as I lunged that direction, he caught me by the shoulder. Ren yanked me around.

Knuckles met my cheek with a skull-shattering crack and I saw lights flash. My head whipped back and I staggered, the knife flying out of my hand.

“Murderer!” Ren growled, the word rumbling hatefully in his chest.

A high pitch ringing came in and out of my hearing, I blinked and shook my head to clear the tinnation. We circled one another in the dark. The shuffle of our movements and jagged breaths betrayed our location to the other.

“You’re despicable!” My voice sounded more like raw tearing than words. “How can you speak about Rose in such a way! She cares for you!”

“And I love her!” Ren erupted, the odd vulnerability of his statement doing nothing to sheath the barbs of his fury. “Which is why I will do whatever it takes, nothing will stand in my way!”

My foot hit something. A wooden clatter rang off my boot and I stumbled, luckily just beyond the reach of Ren’s whizzing fist. As I ducked, I scooped up the length of timber I had tripped over, swinging in the veiled blackness.

“Agh,  — Fuck!” 

A sick crack of wood and bone filled the cavern as the timber made contact. Before I could wind it back for another blow, Ren grasped the board and levered his weight against mine, tearing it from my hands. At this point I was so turned around, there was no way to guess where the other weapons had fallen; in fact, I wasn’t even sure which direction led out of the mine.

_ Stupid, stupid Hux.  _ A flash of panic flushed through my veins. The movement of air whistled not two feet from me: Ren had the beam and that toothpick in his tree-trunk arms would split my skull any second now.

Hastily, I leaped upward and caught hold of the bucket bailer chain. The belt sped me down the shaft, but I knew not whether I went toward the cavemouth or deeper into the bowels of the mountain.

The breath of death curling about my face grew thinner: I blinked and the blinding darkness was changing. The iron chain chafed my hands and my elbows knocked against my ears but I wouldn’t let go for hell or nobody. The black in front of my eyes turned grey and then a hazy pink.

Rounding the bend, the burst of sunset was blinding. Lilac, mauve and crimson stained my lids as I squinched my eyes shut. I released the bailer chains and dropped with a thud onto the steel tracks at the mine’s mouth. Ringing pain juddered through my ankles from the impact, the throbbing in my shoulder was a sharp stab with each heartbeat. 

I doubled over, panting, wheezing, Clinging wobbly-legged to the earth.

The entrance of the mine was quiet. It was perched on the hillside overlooking the flickering lights of Cerro Gordo town and the vast, blue expanse of Owen’s Valley, hedged with the black silhouettes of the Sierra Nevada. Those mountains had sheltered me. The first time I rode up their jagged peaks, there were only scattered fragments of the General, the spy and the traitor, knocking around in my hollowed-out insides. Now, standing above this wide vista between me and the man I once was, I felt my heart beating solid and firm.

A dry gust whipped up the canyon, fluttering my calico shirt against my bloodied chest and I heard the mournful call of a wolf.

White heat ripped through my breast.

At the same time, I heard the gunshot: not only behind me from the depths of the mine, but also as an echo bounding off the hills and mountains like a deafening rockfall.

I crumpled to the ground, a numbing shock jolting through my veins. The world slowed: each bit of gravel articulated itself underneath my cheek, a sighing wind ruffled my hair. I had tasted the spy’s reward just like this, four years ago.

A great, dark shadow blurred over me. He was framed in streaks of purple and red, beautiful almost.

“You did this,” a voice grated. “You did this to yourself.” Heavy boots crunched away.

The edge of a hot pool met my neck as it crept outward onto the sand. I could feel everything slipping away. All I could think about was Rose’s fingertips on my skin. I heard her voice humming tunelessly, her footsteps puttering about the cabin I would never build her.

Lights began to dim; colors swirled and prismed in my open eyes. Distantly, the wolves cried out to me.

Dusty lips moved but no sound came out.

“Rose.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just another note if you didn’t read my post-chapter comments last time: I don’t think history supports the idea that General Sherman was a war criminal. The documented deaths caused by the March to the Sea were mostly secondary. While it might seem irresponsible to some people to depict a plantation burn-out, I’m not trying to do it in a way that’s sympathetic to the confederate cause. The fact is that people did die in the fires, and war is just a horrible, miserable thing. Personally, I’m very critical of the “total war” model used overtly in just about every American conflict since the Civil War, but (in my opinion) that doesn’t make the southern plantation owners sympathetic. Here is an opinion piece from the NYT about this, it’s not an academic commentary but more a cultural critique so bear that in mind: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/rethinking-shermans-march/
> 
> Here is a great article with pictures about nineteenth century mining technology: http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/mining-technology-nineteenth-century


	16. We Lay the Dead to Rest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back to The Peace of Wild Things! Don't forget, we have a group chat about this story coming up on Saturday at 11pm EST on the GingerRose Discord! (msg me for an invite!)
> 
> A huge THANK YOU to the lovely and insightful[ @SabrinaCornwell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SabrinaCornwell/pseuds/SabrinaCornwell) for sharing your experiences surrounding Méxican death practices and culture, and for the Español! Thank you to the delightful and intrepid [@ElfMaidenofLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/works)for betaing this chapter!
> 
> TW: Contemplating death, hitting, kidnapping, imprisonment, and implied/mentions of non-con. No overt descriptions of rape. 

The first feeling was pain. 

But it was distant. Yesterday’s problem, tomorrow’s malaise, next week’s grief.

That’s how it felt waking up after dying: the lingering edges of feelings that didn’t belong to me, not anymore, or maybe not yet.

The dull throb occupying my shoulder and half my ribcage —that pain was fucking mine and it was wracking my sore bones, wretched as blazing Jesse.

_ Ugh, blame it _ .

My mouth tasted like ants. I tried to shift my body but found my joints stiff as a board.

“You’re awake.”

Painfully, my neck rotated, tugging my throbbing head along with it. Hope pattered in my chest, but I didn’t know why. That hope drained away when I looked up into the face of Poe Damerón.

Poe wore a fine black bolero jacket and trousers, embroidered intricately with white thread: fitting mourning attire of Owen’s Valley’s newly-crowned ranching king. His shifty posture, however, was far from nobility.

“You look like hell, Hugs,” he said.

Air wheezed from my crackling lips in two indignant huffs, but Damerón got the point.

“Yeah, you’re right.” 

He sat back, propping his black boots on the edge of my clean blankets. 

“I wasn’t here day and night, wringing my hands while your shadow darkened death’s door.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I’m hiding,” Damerón whispered. “Tía Maria and her obnoxious little dog-collecting daughter are on me like flies on shit!”

I grunted at him.  _ Moron. _

My recent history seemed dim; reaching out toward it in my mind left me impossibly exhausted. Still, I felt the shape of something, a shadowed silhouette. 

_ Missing. Important, —no, everything. _

Suddenly, it hit me so hard; I felt the piercing sting of that robbing bullet all over again.

My throat made a desperate, crackling plea and I lurched upward. Immediately, the pressure in my head swirled and enormous black spots bloomed in my vision.

“Easy there, Lazarus!” Poe jumped forward, lowering me back down —if not somewhat pushing me back into the pillow. “You can’t do anything for her with a bullet wound and what’s left of a fever.”

I begged Damerón with my eyes. 

_ Tell me. Tell me where she is. _

“I can’t…uh…” He shook his head, pretending not to understand. His gaze fell.

“Rose,” I croaked.

“They’re in Aspendell, last I heard,” Dameròn said softly. “Rose and Mr. Solo.”

I hissed, my insides filling with indignation like burning acid.

“I’m sorry, Hux.”

_ I need to get to her, I’ve got to get her away from him.  _ With a stab, I wondered if she had gone back to him. She certainly wasn’t here with me.

“Alberto Sanchez —you remember him? He found you,” Poe recounted. “‘Brought his mule team up to the Rancho. You were barely holding on, Hux. There was nothing we could do about Rose.”

My brows drew together, heart pounding in my throat.

“We sent Murphy out to Cerro Gordo asking about her. Nobody knows where Mr. Solo took her, but they suspect he’s in Aspendell, where he’s been building his new mine.”

I scrunched my eyes shut, pushing out Ren’s voice blistering in my head.  _ I’ve built her the biggest house in town.  _ Fuck him.

Damerón patted my bedside, his manner about as comforting as a horsefly bite.

“It’s only been four days, they couldn’t have gotten far!”

I sucked in a breath, feeling my raw, punctured shoulder inflame with the deepness of my inhale.

“By the way, nice going there —dropping off your deseo del corazón at the doorstep of her crazy fiancé!” 

He leaned over me with an imperious smirk I would have slapped off had I been able. 

“I knew you liked her; you were so full of shit!”

I lifted my head.

“Fah…fuck you!”

Poe’s face lit up.

“¡Ahí estás, ruco pelirrojo!” His features seemed to ease with relief.

_ Damerón was worried about me. _ The realization made my chest bubble with a small amount of gratification. Very small.

I coughed, “ No estoy tan ruco, chamaco.”

“That’s the spirit.” Poe slapped the side of my bed. “Now we just have to hide until mi familia gets the fuck out of here.”

“Where’s Finn?” My voice was cluttered and creaky.

“Ayyyy…” he scowled. “Finn’s angry with me too. Everybody’s breathing down my neck.”

“Have you already buried your father?” 

“Yes, we buried him the day you arrived. La Novena, the mourning vigil, lasts for nine days,” he explained. “We pray for my father’s soul to be released from purgatory and keep the velas lit for him at all times. And we don’t sweep. Sweeping could usher out his soul.”

I grunted. That sounded somewhat appealing at the moment  — for my soul, that is, not Señor Damerón.

“Mostly my cousins are a bunch of viejas chismosas, waiting for me to make some kind of statement about the future of Rancho Damerón,” Poe snorted, “And Abuela won’t stop feeding them, so they won’t leave.”

“What are they waiting for?”

Damerón sighed.

“They’ve made it abundantly clear they expect me to announce my engagement.”

I couldn’t resist a rough, chuff of a laugh.

“ ¡ Cállate, carajo!" he steamed.

He stopped abruptly when my hacking laughter continued like the thick, cracking glass. My lungs spasmed; I fissured and broke into dry, expressionless sobs. 

_ I was engaged to her. She was my fiancee. Mine. We said it on the stagecoach. _

“Whoa,” Poe softened. “Cálmate.”

“Your father’s lucky, Damerón,” I said dryly, catching my breath. “Every time I die, I seem to wake up having lost everything.”

“ ¡ Oye!” he crossed himself. “¡No faltes al respeto a los muertos!”

I leaned back against the pillow, wishing that I could release some of the pain brimming inside me. But no tears came.

Poe leaned in close; his voice dropped. 

“Abuela, she’s the one who saved you, she said you had old scars  más espantosas que el diablo!”

My hand flew to my shoulder and breast, bound with clean strips. My fingers traced lumpy shapes tucked into the bindings, most likely talismans of the Damerón’s hybrid Catholic and animist faith. One bump was definitely a crucifix. Ren had shot me in nearly the exact place I’d been pierced those years ago.

“I was hastily executed during the war,” I dropped the fact heavily, “I freed some prisoners at Peachtree Creek and it became evident that I had been the one feeding secrets to General Sherman.” 

I winced, looking away.

“Pryde had engaged Sherman’s troops with our weaker left flank and couldn’t be bothered to kill me properly.”

“How the hell did you escape?” Poe gaped.

“I had some men still loyal to me. I don’t know how they looked me in the eye after…” I coughed again. “Anyway, they hid me in a hayloft until I could stay on a stolen horse long enough to ride out of Atlanta.”

“¡Me cago en Dios!” His eyes were wide as saucers. “You’re making me curse while I’m supposed to be in mourning.”

“Wasn’t much of a loss if everything I had was a lie anyhow,” I said, ruefully. “No point in ordering young men to their deaths to keep those bastards in power.”

It hit me again.  _ Everything you had with her was a lie too. _

Blood drained out of my face. If the truth sets you free, why then were my resurrections such a fucking nightmare? I closed my eyes.  _ Why hadn’t I just died? _

Footsteps on the plaster floor and the creaking of hinges opened my eyes again.

“¡Hola!” A warm voice filled the room.

Poe leaped up and widened the door for his grandmother as she whisked inside carrying a loaded tray. She was a tiny, quick-eyed, no nonsense woman with soft edges that betrayed abundant fondness underneath her strict nature.

“¿Dónde has estado, m’ijo?” Her eyebrows shot up at her grandson.

“Estaba con Hux,” Damerón said quickly. “Necesita a alguien. Es muy triste y patético, ¿ves?”

“¡No soy patético!” I shot back.

Abuela Alba set the tray down and turned toward me with an expression on her face that told me I was, indeed, a pathetic sight.

“Echemos un vistazo a tus vendas, pobrecito.” 

She bent over my bedside and lifted back the woven textiles draped across me, helping me to sit up, which I did with an unbidden groan. Her fingers were rough and cool against my bare skin where the bandages covered my broken flesh. The intrusion, while reddening my cheeks with Damerón looking on, felt as familiar and comforting as if she had been my own grandmother. The bindings peeled back to reveal a puffy, scabbing exit wound with puckering edges, but mercifully clean margins and no pink streaks of infection. 

Alba hummed softly as she packed the wound with a poultice that smelled dark and herbaceous. It stung a little, smearing thickly over my flesh in the front and back of my shoulder.

“A clean shot,” I remarked bitterly.

“Es tan sarcástico,” Poe snorted. “¡Casi muere!”

“Pocos mueren de una herida de bala en el hombro,” Abuela set down her stone pestle of herbs and cupped my cheek. “Éste tiene... broken heart.”

Her kindness plucked at the raw scabbing barely holding back my feelings of loss; I felt everything rise thickly in my throat. My eyes dropped to the vivid, patterned blanket rumpled around my hips. 

_ Green. Black. Blue. Don’t crack. Red. Orange. Don’t think about Rose. _

Alba was re-wrapping the cotton strips, muttering prayers as she tucked a wooden rosary back into the looping folds.

“Tu tía y tu primo te están buscando, Poe,” she said, giving her grandson an amused look.

Damerón froze like prey animal.

“Habla con ellas, m’ijo.” His grandmother’s knowing gaze bored into him.

“No estoy listo, abuelita,” he crumbled.

She pursed her lips, nodding.

“Nuestra familia tal vez nunca esté lista para lo que eres, pero debes estar listo para ser quien eres.” 

Poe’s eyes snapped up at his grandmother, fixing her with a frightened stare.

“Te amo por lo que eres, Poe,” Alba notched a finger under his chin. 

The moment hung longer than Damerón and I could hold our breaths, and I could tell it shook him up considerably. Alba finally went back to fluffing my pillows, propping me up to take a light meal of organ meat broth and bitter, spicy té de ajo macho. The liquids were hearty, fortifying and trickled life back into my leeched bones. 

Poe leaned against the wall, chewing on a concha pastry and staring out the window. When Abuela took her leave, he slumped into the chair next to me and whipped out his flask.

“¡Dios mio! I wonder if they all know!”

“You’re not very subtle.”

“Fuck you,” he snapped after gulping a slug of liquor.

“Give me some of that.” I gestured weakly.

Poe handed me the flask. Liquid heat burned down my throat, but my blood was too heavy to stir.

“If I don’t marry, they’ll disown me.” Damerón lamented. “I’ll lose the ranch.”

“So do it.”

“I love Finn!”

“Then don’t do it!” I spat.

“Either I go after the person I love and risk losing everything, or I keep what I have and risk losing the person I love!” Poe dropped his curly head into his hands, his elbows propped up on his knees.

“What a familiar problem,” I growled. “Let’s hope you don’t get shot.”

Poe eyed me with feinted frustration.

“Realmente te desprecio.”

“Igualmente,” I smirked, shutting my eyes.

I heard the pages of a book shuffle, clearly Damerón wasn’t going anywhere. I was too weak and spent to really mind. I would never have admitted it then, but as I hovered over the abyss of my failure and loss, Poe’s presence kept me closer to the light. 

I yawned. Sleep clawed at the corners of my brain, drawing me down into fitful, tense dreams.

***

It was the house of her dreams.

Bookshelves lined the great room, already flush with endless rows of leather and linen spines  _ — _ all her favorite titles, and many she hadn’t yet read, but wanted to. To that end, an enormous soapstone fireplace framed two leather chairs and a plush velvet chaise for cozy evenings with noses in books.

In the dining room hung a crystal chandelier larger than her. The long, polished dinner table was obviously imported from France.

Dark, sleek wood paneling followed her down the halls and up the glossy walnut steps. It smelled new,  _ it smelled rich.  _

Persian carpets, satin brocade curtains, ornately carved furnishings, lush silk, velvet and fur offering a hundred sensuous textures she could run her hands over endlessly. Everything about the house was a seduction. 

And she hated it.

“Damn it!” she jiggled the door handle for the hundredth time. Rose was certain she could pick the lock if the findings weren’t built into the door from the outside.

“Ugh! What kind of a sick bastard installs a lock on the outside of his bedroom!” She beat the gaudy carved surface of the door with both fists. Her wrists burned, everything in her body pulsed with aching, rougened tenderness.  _ Everything _ . Her eyes stung with infuriated tears.

They had arrived that morning after a night in Lone Pine and two in Bishop Creek.

He had said over and over that she wasn’t his prisoner.

But he’d locked her in the bedroom every day.

Dampness streaked down Rose’s cheeks. She stood and walked over to the big bay window looking down over the dirt street of Aspendell. It was an overhanging, more than a two story drop if she smashed the glass and jumped.

Outside, the canyon rose up like rugged, granite dragons curling their sleeping backs around the valley, keeping her away from him.

_ Hux. _

She’d screamed his name over and over when Ben came back down from the mine, alone.

“He gave up and left, Rose,” Ben had growled. “I told him about everything we have together.”

“Where is he?” she wailed. “He would never go! He would  _ never _ leave me!”

“Be quiet.” His voice was low; his body still reeking with the musk of a kill. 

The jagged frenzy of her cries emptied the streets of Cerro Gordo faster than the light fading over the hills. She shrieked his name, sobbed for the man who still dripped from between her thighs.

That was the first time her fiance backhanded her.

Her teeth rattled, stars burst in her temples as she fell into the street.

“Don’t… don’t....God, I’m sorry,” he stammered, looking broken and apologetic. “I shouldn’t have done that Rose, I’m so sorry. Please, be quiet. Be quiet for me, Rosie?”

She sobbed closed-mouthed as he bent over her, her breath staccato, her eyes wild with fear and mistrust. Her cheek was on fire with red knuckle marks.

The shame on his face slipped into dark, possessive lust. 

“I know what’s best for you, Rose,” he bassed, big hands closing around her waist, scooping her off the dusty street. “You came to me, didn’t you, angel?”

He pulled her rigid body close, his nose parting her hair. Plush lips grazed her ear.

“You wanted me, all along. Even when you were with him.”

“No!” she barked, struggling.

“I think we’re well past coquettish games, girl.” A deep, rumbling laugh echoed off the wood cladding of the buildings lining the road.

“Stop!” Terror crept into Rose’s veins as he slung her over his shoulder, one hand plunged salaciously inside her petticoats as he carried her, gripping the meat of her bare thigh.

“I’m taking you somewhere you can rest. You’ve had a fright.”

Solo could feel the spasms of her swallowed sobs throbbing against his shoulder.

He carried her to his muscled black draft horse and clambered into the saddle without letting her go. She watched the slow, rolling canter of glossy black legs take her further and further from the man she loved. The sounds of her crying floated down the mountain and all the way to Lone Pine where Solo booked a tavern room in a part of town shielded from prying eyes. 

Rose was shackled to him with his massive, iron grip. Only when they had gotten into the room and closed the door did he let her go.

“Ben, please!” she bleated. “He’s got to be hurt. Let me go to him, let me go back!”

His chest rattled with curbed wrath, but he swallowed the acrid sting of his ruthless anger. He could be patient. He was a reasonable man.

“Rosie.” He set her onto the bed and held her shoulders. “I fought with Hux and I won’t pretend it wasn’t violent and ungentlemanly. But understand me when I tell you, Hux ran away from me. Anything he may feel for you was less important to him than escaping from me.”

Her lip quivered, her eyes misted but she held a defiant scowl.

“Now how does that make you feel?” he said, his tone quietly menacing. “Do you want to be with someone who turns tail at the sight of a bigger man?”

Rage sparked in Rose’s belly. It caught and blazed in her core, flickering in her eyes and licking from her tongue.

“I don’t believe you!” she lashed out. “I watched you behave like a mindless killer, and then you dragged me down here against my will!”

“Rosie, Rosie,” Solo crooned, elongating the vowels to sound soothing. “Ugly things happen when you bring out the truth in ugly people. You still don’t understand how much danger you were in, travelling with that lying traitor.”

“He’s not that person anymore, Ben!” Rose’s eyes stung with defiant tears. “I know him, I… I love him!”

Light dimmed in her fiance’s gaze. Words died on Rose’s tongue. A pang of cold dread slipped into her chest. 

Darkness drew around his features like the whirling vortex of a lightning storm.

“You love him,” he grated, deep and demonic.

Rose tipped her chin up.

“I do,” she met his molten, blackening eyes with all the fierceness she could gather.

“So you have been unfaithful.” 

The words sounded like rocks colliding, like the mountain crumbling, like a death knell. Rose’s heart started to skitter like a rabbit.

“You’re not the man I agreed to marry!” she snapped back. “I came to Cerro Gordo to break off our engagement.”

“Do you know what happens to unfaithful women, Rose?” Solo crept toward her, his hulking form looming like a grim shadow.

Rose scrambled backward on the bed.

“I do not belong to you, Ben!” she hissed.

“Oh, but you do, Rose.” His booming voice was so low-pitched, it throbbed in her body. She felt the violation of it creep up her spine. 

“I have an engagement contract with your father. Signed by you.”

Rose’s pupils constricted. Her heart plummeted into the floor. 

_ This cannot be happening. _ Her heart flailed like a netted bird. _ I’m not here. I’m in the mountains. I can hear the cows and the wind through the grass and his laugh coming from calf camp. _

“You’ve made this marriage bed, Rose.” Solo’s big lips curved into a malicious smile.

“And now you’re going to lie in it.”

***

“So, third time’s the charm?” I gave Finn a wry look as he sank next to me on the pew.

“A mass is said for the departed on the third, seventh and thirteenth day after their death,” he frowned. “It’s serious, Hux.”

I curled my lip at him, but said nothing. Of course death is serious.

But it’s also ridiculous.

One day, you’re the king of vaquero beef ranching in the Owens Valley and the next day you’re worm food. One afternoon, you’re fucking the love of your life in a moving stagecoach and by sunset you’re bleeding out at the mouth of a silver mine.

Suddenly the  _ Dia de Muertos _ reveries, the sugar skulls and ironically macabre calaveritas made so much sense. 

I wanted to laugh. At a funeral mass.

_ Dying is ridiculous. _

We sat in the back of the brightly painted adobe iglesia, watching Poe itch his stiff, embroidered collar while he stood in the elevated ambo, reading the opening text. Around us, a sea of bobbing paper fans circled the sweltering air through the crowd. The women were shrouded in elaborate, black lace veils that hung down to their frilled dresses and men wore their finest silver plated  cinturon and oiled leather chaquetas . It looked like half the valley showed up for Señor Damerón, and this wasn’t even his first funeral.

Abuela Alba had bullied me into staying bed bound twice as long as I would have preferred, but I insisted on sitting through the service, if only to prove that I was well enough to get on a horse. Now, sitting in the dizzying heat, I thought my blood pressure might not hold through a  _ Padre Nuestro _ . 

What kept my pulse moving through the priest’s droning homily was the piercing wails erupting periodically from a chorus of weeping women. Las plañideras, they were called, the hired mourners conscripted to set the tone for utmost devotion to the dead through excessive, emotional displays. Each shriek jarred my frayed nerves and threatened to puncture my steely veneer. I flashed a hapless look at the door.

Finn too was twitching with las plañideras’ lugubrious moans.

He glanced at me.

“What?”

“You seem disconcerted, is all,” I whispered.

“I’m used to military funerals.” He shuffled uncomfortably. “Just...quieter.”

A long, howl made me want to shrink in my seat. The rawness of the voice stirred my bereavement to unmanagable levels. I would not be able hide from my feelings with these sharp, keening voices cutting away at me like knives. 

_Stupid death._ _Stupid, stupid bodies that die and get shot and fail the people we love._

The crowd of people were joining the cries and moans. A woman close by was sniffing, wiping her eyes underneath her veil. 

_ I almost died. _ It ricocheted around in my ribcage: an inappropriate, unhinged laugh. My chest was vibrating, my shoulders stiff with holding it back.  _ Those bastards keep killing me, but I won’t blaming die. _

I felt Finn stiffen beside me. His eyes were fixed on the back of Poe’s head. Seated at the front of the church, it was obvious from our view that Damerón’s cousin was draped all over him. She clung to his arm and Poe made no move to distance himself. I heard Finn groan.

“What is he doing?” I whispered.

“I think what we all knew he would do.” Finn swallowed.

Another cry tore at me. The wails were building, low and high from people of all ages, echoing off the pitched ceiling of the iglesia. A collective spirit of lament tightened its coils, gripping the room with irresistible force. In the front, I could see Poe’s shoulders shake with sobs, his head drooping like he’d given up. Beside me, Finn’s eyes started to glass over.

My inhibition unraveled.

I laughed.

The room was consumed with all manner of wild, mournful noises. Nobody noticed when my burst of deranged depressurization became bitter, seething sobs. No one watched me allow angry, bereaved tears to slide down my face. Everyone else was crying.

_ Everything ends! _ I wanted to scream.  _ Everyone dies! _

In the fog of grief, I suddenly saw things with clarity. I knew it wasn’t just miscommunication that kept me from pursuing Rose all along: I had always been chained down by unworthiness. I felt named and possessed by the things done to me and the things I had done, and I knew it would eventually take Rose from me. And so it did.

_ But now what? _

I wobbled on the gangly legs of shaky, newborn realization. My worst fears had been realized, and yet I was still standing. It wasn’t over.

There, among the mourners articulating with brutal clarity the briefness of existence, I saw that I could still do something about it. I wasn’t fucking dead yet.

I planted my weakened legs underneath me and pushed to standing, gripping the front pew. My chest thundered with purpose.

_ I’ve got to get the hell out of here and find Rose. _

“Everyone, I have an announcement!”

The priest had come down from the ambo, and now Poe was standing at the front of the pews, dabbing his eyes with an embroidered handkerchief. He squared his shoulders, facing his family and town damp-eyed, yet determined. His gaze locked with Finn at the back of the church; the corner of his lips perked.

“Thank you all for coming,” he addressed the packed audience. “It is a great show of respect and support to my family that you all have attended this, my father’s final funeral mass.

“My father always said that Rancho Damerón was like his other son. I certainly felt that way at times.” He coughed, steadying himself. “Señor Damerón took great risks and paid the costs to create this stability and success for his family. He wanted us to be proud of who we are.”

I could see the back of Abuela Alma’s veiled head leaning forward. Everyone in the church held their breaths. 

“And that is why I have decided to turn over the management of his entire cattle operation to Rancho Damerón’s finest associate, Mr. Hux.”

My stomach lurched. Heads swiveled around and a hundred eyes landed on me, which is when I noticed that I was still standing. 

“I’m leaving the valley to expand the mule packing business in the mountains with my manager, Mr. Storm, and placing the ranch estate in the capable hands of my sister.”

Murmurs rippled across the pews.

“Please join us at Rancho Damerón this evening for refreshments in celebration of my father, thank you,” Poe concluded with a perfunctory dip of his head. The iglesia caught on fire with busy chatter, but Damerón had eyes for only one person at the back of the church. He slipped through the squeeze of cousins, uncles and aunts closing in around him and made his way down the aisle.

Finn was stock-still when Poe finally stood before him: hat held penitently in his hand, dark lashes beating slowly around red-rimmed eyes.

“Will you…?” Damerón’s face twisted with pleading. “Will you come with me?”  _ Will you have me _ , his eyes said.

Finn tensed, his face unreadable.

“I’ll never give you reason to doubt me again,” Poe promised.

Slowly, but with assuring certainty, Finn lifted his arm and extended his hand to Poe.

“You’ve got a deal, partner.” His face split into a wide smile.

Poe beamed with a bright thrill of relief. He shook Finn’s hand and broke into a laugh, slapping him good naturedly on the shoulder.

“Congratulations,” I drawled. “What makes you think I’m cleaning up your poorly-managed herds, Damerón?”

He grinned.

“You’re going to need a bigger income to keep that banker’s daughter, Hugs.”

I flushed, my chest fizzing with a hopefulness that felt young and new.

“I’m riding out to Aspendell,” I said. Both Poe and Finn nodded gravely.

“We’ll come with you,” Finn replied. “When are you leaving?”

I drew in a decisive breath.

“Now.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey sweet ones,
> 
> I want to invite you to join the GingerRose Discord this Saturday, on October 17rd at 11pm EST, we're going to be doing an in-depth fic review of this story. You'll get to share your thoughts, talk about Hux and Rose and cowboys and stuff, it's really going to be a blast. We rescheduled this event because we wanted to include the lovelies who want to be there: that's how committed this group is to inclusivity and uplifting YOU. Thanks to everyone who reached out to me for an invite last week, you are all welcome!
> 
> Send me a message on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/the_desk_fairy) or [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/login_required/the-desk-fairy) to get a link to join us.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Love, Desk <3


	17. Convergence at the Bishop Creek Mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUGE thanks to [@ElfMaidenOfLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/pseuds/ElfMaidenOfLight) for her continued beta support and overall incredible feedback in helping me develop this story. You are such a gem, I have grown so much with your input. CHECK OUT THIS BRILLIANT HUMAN'S DELIGHTFUL WORK!
> 
> TW: Overt mentions of non-con, dark vibes, racism and gun violence.

Dawn threaded through a gap in the heavy silk curtains, drawing a thin line across the room.

Rose stared at it. She imagined that the long pale beam was a tiny road, and she was riding a chestnut mare down its path, out of the room, out of the house, upward across the rising sun and into the mountains.

Ben stirred.

Heavy blinks from thick-lashed eyes cleared; his razor-sharp gaze settled on her. The white cotton rumpled about his enormous shoulders, skin taut over muscles that flexed and rippled as he slithered toward her.

“Good morning, angel,” he intoned, five octaves deep and thick with lust.

Rose swallowed. Her thighs felt sticky like a dried scab, fear bristled on the back of her neck.  _ Appease him now, get out later. _ She blinked quickly.

“I could use some coffee,” she said.

“I could use some of your sweet cunny.” Two tree-trunk arms closed powerfully around her. His large, hawk-like nose nuzzled her cheek as he pulled her hips against his. “I’d like to use it all day.”

Rose sipped a small breath before Ben rolled on top of her, crushing her lungs. He kissed and bit at her neck, adding to the marks he’d put there the night before.

“Coffee isn’t a very ladylike beverage for the morning anyhow,” he said, muffled by her hair.

“Since when do you care if I’m a lady?” she ground out through squashed lungs. “You take me to bed before you take me to the altar.”

Ben reared back and grabbed her chin, his fingers digging into her soft flesh.

“What did I tell you about mouthing off?” he said, his words dripping with threatening sweetness. Rose glared up at him, wild-eyed. Her heart pattered in her chest. 

Ben had always been rough. Before, when they’d sneaked off to the garden at her father’s estate in Mission Bay, his wild attentions had felt thrilling, sensuously dangerous. Now it felt like he was taking something that didn’t belong to him.

_ Is Hux even alive? _ The thought stabbed her.

“I’m sorry.” She morphed, changing into the masked woman who would survive. Baby eyelashes flitted prettily. “Please, won’t you feed me first? I’d do anything for some of those buttered eggs Cookie makes!”

Her whines stirred a grating chuckle in his enormous barrel chest.

“ _ Anything _ is quite the promise, little miss” His big lips cracked into a malicious smile. A hand slid up her bare leg and squeezed the thick meat of her arse. Fingers stroked the ridge of her spine north and south, with a sudden dip he breached her tailbone and slipped his fingertips along the inside seam of her cheeks.

Rose’s face did not move an inch. 

“I think I’ll have you again before I go to the mine today.” His lips spread, revealing carnivorous teeth.

For a moment, Rose thought the rapping on the door was her pulse ramming through her skull.

Ben sat up.

“‘Scusing me, Mr. Solo,” the housekeeper sounded disturbed. “There’s one of those mongrel Paiutes here to see you. I didn’t show him in, of course...”

Ben ripped aside the bedclothes from his knees and slid off the creaking mattress. He wrapped himself in his silk banyan and stalked toward the door.

“I’m sorry sir,” Cookie stuttered, beholding the twisted ire of his employer. “I told him we didn’t have any food for the likes of him, but he won’t go ‘till he speaks with you.”

“A moment,” Solo growled, closing the door in the housekeeper’s face. 

Rose was still frozen in the bed. Her fiancé opened the entrance joining their ensuite rooms and disappeared inside his own chamber. She heard the lock twist and click on his side.

_ Sick bastard. _ She hissed.

Scampering out of the bed, she pushed aside the curtains, clutching her robe around her shoulders.

Rose inhaled sharply.

Down below her window, waiting on the threshold of the house was a familiar Nuumu man. He wore long, beaded buckskin clothes and his fine hair shone with neatly-set bear grease.

“John Charlie!” Rose squeaked. 

John’s eyes followed the sound up to the second level. Rose could tell he had registered her presence, but he did not flinch or change his expression. A moment later, Rose knew why.

Solo’s muffled voice boomed through the architecture of the house. John was clearly denied an invitation inside, but he held the porch with dignity. His stance was authoritative, almost regal; he spoke with calm, measured tones. Rose could hear the annoyance in Ben’s response.

“You people have no business pushing your superstition onto me!” Solo strode toward John Charlie, standing a full head above him. John didn’t move. Rose couldn’t hear his answer, but he stood, shoulders squared below her fiancé like he wasn’t giving any ground.

Finally, John turned and descended the steps, leaving Ben fuming on the porch. He cast a glance up at Rose. 

Her blood lurched, not knowing what gesture might transmit cross-culturally, “help me, I’m being kept here against my will.” 

Before she could think of anything, John’s eyes dropped and he followed the path toward the road leading away from the house.

“Damn it!” Rose pounded the window.

She was still flushed with cold sweat when Ben returned.

“What are you doing, princess?” He prowled across the length of turkish carpet.

Rose jumped. She flustered, glancing out the window and fumbling for words.

Ben’s eyes raked up and down her like he could pull her thoughts of escape right off the top of her mind. His eyes blackened with jealousy.

_ Poor foolish little one, she still doesn’t know who she belongs to. _

Rose backed up against the window, her arse cheek squished against the pane. Light pooled around her, the glare illuminating her outward edges while her face remained in shadow.

“Who… Who was that?” she asked, her mind whirring to cover her tracks.

“Just a dirty Paiute,” he said dismissively. “No one you need to concern yourself with.”

_ Nuumu. _ Rose curled her lips.  _ Kucadicadi. _

She drifted toward the chifferobe standing on the wall behind them, slipping on her white linen shift. She rifled through the gowns like she was expecting her lady’s maid to arrive any moment and help her into one.

“I think I’ll wear the green brocade today…” Rose ventured over her shoulder. “What did the man want?”

A hand closed around her shoulder.

“Ben…” The air whooshed out of Rose’s lungs.

“Come to bed,” his voice crunched like gravel. “Mrs. Baker isn’t coming upstairs until I ring her.”

Rose’s legs felt weak, her throat tightened.

“Isn’t it getting a bit late, Ben?”

His grip dug into her skin. Like falling into a dark well, Rose felt herself propelled toward the feather mattress. She sank into engulfing blankets, her spirit drowning in Ben’s confining luxuries. She sat up against the give of the tufted bed and watched the creature to whom she was engaged stalk her like a mountain lion. 

Heavy packs of muscle moved under the starched cotton of his shirt. His crisp, refined trousers could not civilize the savage bulge tenting in the front. Rose gulped around a thick lump in her throat.

It was so different, the way Hux had taken her. Where Hux had worshipped, adored and venerated, Ben took, possessed and used. She had been able to enjoy being Ben’s plaything before she had been Hux’s goddess. Nothing compared to that. And now she saw Ben’s vicious ministrations came from a deep void of entitlement: a pit that might swallow her up. Rose studied his lustful face.

_ We are not good together, _ she thought, her mind racing.

“Come here,” she said, reaching out to Ben. She called upon the voice of a mother she didn’t remember. “Let me hold you.”

The feral glint in his hazel eyes flickered curiously. Large, slanted lips closed and he seethed with a sound that reminded her of a purr. Folding onto all fours, Ben clambered onto the bed and gave her a threatening little smile. Just when Rose thought he was going to rip off her shift, he laid his head in her lap and sighed.

Rose raked her fingers through his shining dark brown hair with long, soothing strokes. Ben’s face slackened, a beast mollified.

“I know a Paiute story.”

“Hmm.” Ben couldn’t be bothered to comment. He let out a deep sigh.

“Once upon a time,” she began, even though the Nuumu wouldn’t have started it that way. She was nervous.

“There was a magic man and a magic woman with a special bottle. They heard sounds inside and when they tipped it over, out popped two tiny men and two tiny women.”

Ben grunted again, but looked almost asleep. Rose let herself recall Hux’s lips brushing her ear when he first gave her these words from Sarah Winnemucca around the Kucadikadi communal fire. With each phrase he felt closer, hovering just behind her, the warmth from his body filling the breath of space between them.

“The magic woman cared for one couple and they became good people, but the couple guided by the magic man became bad. Both of the pairs learned how to make fire. The good couple produced very little smoke, but the bad couple’s fire poured with thick, unbreathable clouds that bothered everyone.”

Rose thought about the man ruled by the earth, the one driven to nurture soft things. Images of him pulling a warm, wet calf into the world settled in the base of her stomach like a glowing coal. She could see his kind face, the affectionate bunch of his lips in concentration, his bright, seaglass eyes unafraid to go damp with awe at tender new life. He was taught by feminine seasons and rhythms to heal and open.

“Then what happened?”

“Hmm?” Rose was surprised Ben was even listening. “Well, the two couples began to argue about the smoke, they couldn’t reconcile, and because of it, they couldn’t protect each other when dangerous foreigners came.”

“Ha,” Ben sniffed. “Those Paiutes, ever paranoid, particularly of foreigners.”

Rose frowned.

“What do you think it means?” Ben asked, his big hand curling around her knee. She wasn’t expecting this question.

“I don’t know, honestly. Maybe that Paiute man will come back and we can ask him,” she laughed nervously.

Ben opened his eyes and gave her a warning look.

“I suppose it means…hmm...” Rose searched her mind hastily. “Maybe the smoke is the trouble the couples produce as the result of what they learned from the magic man or the magic woman. Perhaps the couple who follows female wisdom has very little trouble, while the couple who follows the male wisdom has enough trouble to disturb everyone.”

“Since when is wisdom male or female?”

“I don’t know, it’s just a legend anyhow.”

Ben’s laugh pitched an octave deeper still. It sounded to Rose like an animal in the depths of a cave.

“You’ve gotten some odd ideas living out in the mountains, Rosie.”

As soon as he said this, the smile dropped from his enormous lips and a chilling shadow of avarice clouded his face. Rose’s stomach tightened. She felt fear clench at her innards like a fist. Ben looked up at the ceiling for several more moments and then cast a possessive eye over her.

“I want you to come with me to the mine today,” he said, taking on a persuading tone. 

Her heart buoyed.  _ Escape. _

“Well then, I suppose the burgundy muslin frock will have to do instead of the brocade!” she said just to answer him, the pitch of her voice nearly betraying her giddiness.

“Women and their dresses,” Ben chuffed with fond sarcasm.

Rose laughed with him but she felt sour inside.  _ How little you know me.  _ Her chest squeezed with the memory of Hux’s face that morning he saw her in trousers.  _ Bewitched. _

She clung to that picture in her head as Ben cursed at his pocket watch and returned to his quarters to prepare for the day. Rose stood in front of her mirror, clinging to the bedpost as Mrs. Baker tightened her corset.

Her mind traced the edges of her beloved’s pale, quartz cheekbones, his velvet lips, his firm, decisive jaw. Closing her eyes, she let two green Arkansas winds storms sweep her away. She drowned in the memory of him paying her homage in a bed of fire poppies. Her head brimmed with the slow Southern vowels of his honey whiskey voice,  _ “Hey, Possum!” _

Even if Benjamin Solo invaded her body, he could not claim an inch of her thoughts filled with Armitage Hux.

***

Milli had always been a smooth ride. 

She’s as surefooted as the day Mitaka stole her from Ren’s cavalry division and tied my arse to the saddle. I was achy and half-feverish then too. Sitting back now into her smooth, coasting canter, I remembered riding out of Atlanta with a constant stab in my shoulder. That felt about the same.

The biggest difference in _ this _ , my second first ride after dying, was where I was going. 

The first time I was leaving everything and riding into the unknown. This time, I was leaving the sting of not knowing and riding toward my everything. My Rose.

Heat beat down on us from above and radiated off the sun-baked valley floor. The sage hemmed thick around the road; it was harsh in my nose, sharp and bitter. Dust coated my face and ground between my teeth but I hardly felt it. My heart pounded with purpose. Rose was out there, and blame it to goddamn Jesse, I would fly to her if I could.

It was a little over three hours ride up from Rancho Damerón to Aspendell and I wasn’t about to pace myself. Finn, Poe and I set out a fast clip across the valley. 

When we slowed to a walk up the switchbacks, gaining altitude alongside the middle fork of the Bishop Creek, the two of them started passing back and forth tidbits about that cursed fiancé, Ren. Details which they had previously withheld out of courtesy. Fuck ‘em.

“I heard Solo is un pendejo total,” Damerón said. “All the teamsters buying mules from us complain about his temper.”

“Haverstein at the malthouse told me that one day he got a complaint about a bad barrel at Cerro Gordo. When he got up there, Mr. Solo shot a hole in every last barrel. Told him to bring a new wagonload!”

“¡Hijo de puta!” Poe cackled. “I heard from one of the girls at Madam Maz’ that he is no longer allowed there!”

This gave me serious pause.

“What?” I swiveled around in my saddle.

Blood drained from Damerón’s face.

“I mean, what does she know, perhaps he didn’t pay his bill...”

“Tell me exactly what she said!” I snapped.

“No sé…”

“Poe!” Finn growled.

“You know the tall one with brown hair? Miss Rey… I forget what her surname is? Solo came to see her quite often, she said he was a gentleman at first. Until one night she was busy with someone else. After that he was…” Poe trailed off.

“Tell me, Damerón!” I said hoarsely.

“Violento. Muy duro y despiadado sin su consentimiento.”

Bile rolled up my throat. I nearly pulled Milli to a stop so I could be sick. 

“You knew that and you didn’t say anything?” Finn reprimanded him for me.

“ ¡Dios, lo siento!” Poe shot back. “I thought Miss Tico would have known!”

It’s not as though I didn’t expect violence from Ren, but I had clung to the hope that his wrath wouldn’t extend to women.  _ Jesus, fuck. _

I closed my eyes and prayed that Ren wouldn’t learn Rose had bedded his rival. Christ, that man’s unmitigated fury would destroy her if he knew!

“I have to kill him,” I said, mosty to myself.

“ ¡ Mierda!”

“Let’s not be too hasty, Hux,” Finn spurred Falcon and trotted up beside me so he could look me in the eye. “If we can get Rose out of there…”

“Ren will part with his own life before he lets me take a hair off his arse.”

I pulled out a borrowed single action Colt .45 and checked the bullets slotted in its six chambered cylinder. The ammunition belt slung over my shoulder hardly typified a peaceful rescue on my part. If I’d learned anything from suffering in a pool of my own blood it’s that you shoot to kill or not at all.

Rage was boiling so hot in my ears that I’m ashamed to say it was Damerón who first picked up someone coming down the trail.

“Quick, behind these rocks!” Finn gestured toward an outcropping that would hide us long enough to know who we were dealing with.

The precaution turned out to be unnecessary.

“John Charlie!” I shouted, waving my arm.

The group pouring down the trail was a large party of Kucadikadi. Children scampered between clusters of men and women carrying light packs and babies in cradleboards. Faces were tense and dust swept. They seemed hasty in their minimal gathering of supplies, but their pace was steady and deliberate. 

Spotting me, John broke away from Sadie and trudged up the sandy bluff toward us.

“I’ve seen your woman, Hux,” were the first words he said.

My heart dove into the sand bank below my horse. I jumped down from my saddle as if getting a closer look at John’s eyes would better transfer to me to what he had seen.

“You saw Rose?” I answered him in Nuumu.

“She’s trapped in the house of the Bishop Creek man, Solo.” John scowled. “That man is a coyote.”

“Blame it,” I cursed in English. “Was she alright?”

John grabbed my arm, a familiarity that felt almost too intimate for my stiff Victorian manners. At that moment, I was just glad for something to steady me. 

“She was not well, Hux,” he said grimly. “There was fear in her eyes.”

My heart sank. John made an empathetic face but did not waste time.

“Hux, we are leaving the mountain.”

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“The animals are running from this part of the mountains, they’re telling us evil is coming.”

I wondered for a moment if I had mixed up some Nuumic vocabulary.

“The Bishop Creek men have brought disaster on us,” John said, “You must get off the mountain.”

“I have to get Rose,” I replied. “I can’t go without her.”

John Charlie murmured in agreement, but his face tightened grimly.

“Watch the animals of the ground. The rat, the snake, the centipede. When they go, you go.”

I was utterly flummoxed by this, but thanked him and saddled back up.

John and Sadie waved goodbye before joining the parade of Kucadikadi on their mysterious exodus down toward the Owens Valley.

“What did they want?” Damerón asked as we reined back up the trail.

“They’re headed off the mountain… something to do with animals leaving.” I shook my head.

I might have given this more thought had I been less distraught over John’s description of Rose. 

We rode up the switchbacks, climbing steadily toward Aspendell in anxious silence. My mind tumbled with various scenarios based on what we’d find when we reached that alpine valley.

Violence was the only way with Ren. It had to be. Hot waves surged vengefully in my veins; I felt my adrenaline climb. I visualized myself challenging him again, only this time I would win.

Of course Ren had to die. I would tear the flesh off him. I would fucking eviscerate him and leave his carcass to the animals.

But something else shifted uncomfortably under that thought.

_ You tried that. What now? _

This guiding voice in my subconscious was new, it didn’t sound like the accusing little spectre that normally picked at my every move with claws of self-doubt. This voice felt calmer, settled in the base of my chest. Motherly almost.

A shadow caught my eye.

Animals were running under the shaded boughs of Douglas fir and sugar pines along the road.

“Wolves!” I called to Finn and Poe.

We could see a pack of them darting through the stand; pinging bullets of silver, glossy fur and flying paws. One of the wolves stopped and looked up from the dappled gloom of the trees. She was bigger than the others, with a queenly carriage and glistening, sleek fur. Her sharp, yellow eyes studied me. Great ears swiveled. A regal, elegantly pointed snout tested the air.

She was listening, watching.

The testosterone pulsing in my head eased some. My breathing slowed.

I listened and watched too.

“Hux, look!” Finn pointed to someone ahead of us on the road.

I squinted.

A woman.

***

When they passed into the canyon, they could see the mining town shacked together down the center of the valley floor. 

Rose craned her neck to look up at the looming ridge above them. Great, bare clefts of bedrock reached high above the treeline in ancient, rugged formations like rough-hewn faces. Only four weeks ago, Hux had pointed to a similar, naked strip on Ward Mountain, his shoulder brushing hers with bashful intimacy. 

“Avalanche,” he’d said. 

She imagined the ruthless sweep of rushing snow: pushing aside greath swaths of pines, leaving strips of the mountainside soilless and bald. 

It made her feel a bit sad.

But the hubris of trees was not shaken. Looking carefully, Rose could see small patches of new growth like scruffy bottle brushes, each sapling making a bold little stand in the empty sections of slope.

“Even in loss, the green things never cease to try again,” she said. Rose eased back on the reins to look up at the ridge and her pony, a mischievous strawberry roan, slowed. 

“That’s Cardinal Rock,” Ben said, reining his enormous black thoroughbred up beside her. “You’ll be looking up at it every day when school starts in the fall.”

Rose squinted.

“It doesn’t look much like a cardinal.”

“No.” Solo made a bemused sound. “It’s a ‘cardinal’ in the sense that it’s above Bishop.”

She laughed for the first time in almost a month.

“What a ridiculous joke!” she snorted. 

The echo of Ben’s chuckle eased their tension slightly. Rose felt a hint of hope, a scrubby, reckless little pine-shoot with thin roots, gripping desperately to bare rock.

The middle fork of the Bishop Creek fed a flush of plants and trees along its banks. It smelled herbaceous and alive as Rose’s pony squished wetly through the saturated grass.

“That’s going to be the lodge and office there,” Solo recited, pointing to a large timber structure half-framed at the head of a wide dirt road. Stout little cabins dotted either side of the creek. “And over there I’m putting in a new bunkhouse.”

“It’s coming together nicely,” Rose remarked absently. “Where’s the schoolhouse?”

“There’s no reason to construct one immediately,” he answered like it was obvious. “You can hold classes at the lodge until the operation requires enough staffing to make benefits like that worth my money.”

Rose flashed with anger.

“So no slates, no books?”

“You have books, don’t you?” Ben shrugged offhandedly. “And oral recitation was good enough for Socrates and Aristotle, was it not?”

“Since when is educating children an optional perk to attract workers?”

A sacrificial sigh left Solo’s lips and he shook his head at Rose, his black felted hat swaying.

“Leave the business to me, Rosie.”

Rose didn’t know why she was angry. In fact, it should have been validating to discover that her fiancé had no real intention of furnishing a proper education to the miners’ children. Now she had no reason to feel guilty about escaping off into the wilderness. Still, she gripped her reins more tightly, feeling indignation hammer in her temples.

“This way, to the mine.” Ben urged his horse down the trail, leading out of the mining town and through a thick grove of draping willows and rustling aspens. The creek made a round, shallow pool in the shade of the trees; clear water ruffled noisily over the rocks and then emptied smooth and glassy like a great mirror. Rose watched her pony’s prim hooves make sprinkling wavelets as they splashed across.

This was the end of the landscape’s welcoming softness.

They ascended a sandy hill and came upon a great, disheveled heap of blasted granite slabs. The shaft of the mine was obscured by a complex laddered scaffolding. A brand new building stood against the cleft of the hill above them. Between the shaft and the house, rough, weather-worn men were hauling up crates of ore on splintered log skids using a coal-powered compressed air hoist. Their faces were grim and veiled with dust and soot.

The machine hoist growled with clattering gears, black smog belching from it, coating a wide radius in foul particles. Rose could see a swath of clear-cut stumps on the other side of the hill: a hasty snatching of timber to construct the many outbuildings and scaffolding scattered about the mine.

“This is the most efficient Cyanide House in the Sierras,” Solo said proudly. 

Rose gawked.

“Cyanide? As in poison?”

“You don’t eat it, Rosie,” he chuckled paternally. “Cyanide breaks down the ore and leeches out the gold.” 

Ben launched into a dry description of the mountain’s mineral content. She heard something about quartzite, calcite and arsenopyrite, but mostly he was talking over her head. His imperious tone and industry jargon gave Rose the sense that he was trying to put her in her place. She interrupted.

“That sluice, is that where the separated ore goes?” She pointed to a long, aluminium chute leading down the hill toward a massive pit. A hideous, bitter-almond smell rose up from its shallow recess, cooking in the hot summer sun.

With a nod, Solo gave Rose a surprised look.

“You just dump toxic poison back into the ground?” she accused. “Isn’t that pit dangerously uphill from the creek?”

“Rosie.” Ben closed his eyes with a long-suffering huff. “Cyanide offgasses too quickly to be poisonous, it’s perfectly harmless for my men!”

“But the land…”

“I appreciate your charitable concern for the miners and their families, Rosie. God knows we need a woman’s touch around here, but you should be careful not to work yourself up.”

“I am not worked up!” she steamed.

“Perhaps we’d ought to get you back home, you can have a lie down and get freshed up.”

“Mr. Solo?” A grizzled man in dusty clothes and a salt and pepper beard marched up the bank toward them. He spoke to Ben in low tones; Rose couldn’t hear her fiancé’s reply.

She didn’t have to wait long to discover their interruption. After a brisk trot back down into the huddle of cabins, she spotted a familiar figure dismounting a long-eared, speckled mule. 

Two figures, actually. 

A tall, freckled woman with auburn-hair tied the mount to the hitching post in front of the lodge while a short, regal Black woman strode toward them.

“Madame Maz,” Ben greeted her with a sneer in his voice. “Who have I offended now, to earn a personal visit from you?”

“Ah, Monsieur Solo,” said the madame, ever coaxing in her quiet dignity. “I thought perhaps it was time for us to tourner la page.” She smiled. Her rouged lips were like a sweetly curved olive branch.

“So now my money is less detestable to you.”

Maz blinked a few times, Rose imagined the madame was steadying herself.

“I see an opportunity for a collaboration that will be  très bénéfique for us both.” She came up and stood under Ben’s horse, her position by no means lessening her self-possessed authority. “Unless you already have arrangements for a maison de passe?”

Solo grumbled.

“I do not.”

“Shall we discuss terms, then?” Maz offered.

Ben lifted his face, the brim of his hat tipping up to reveal a greedy, predatory gaze that settled on Rey. The cortesian did not buckle. She stood by Maz and returned him with a stern, scrutinizing glare. The way the breeze pressed Rey’s navy gingham around her locked legs showed Rose just how stiffly the courtesan was standing. She was furious.

“Miss Rey, how good of you to come,” Solo’s voice simmered.

“I’m not here for you,” Rey replied scornfully.

_ Oh.  _ Rose’s stomach plunged.  _ Oh… _

“Well allow me to say that it is a delight to see you.” Ben’s enormous lips spread with a look that drew a hateful sneer from Rey’s lips.

Maz took the opportunity to shoot a quick glance at Rose.

The instant the madame’s eyes locked with her’s, Rose knew the women were here for her.

“Let’s talk, Miss Katana,” Solo said, not taking his eyes off Rey. “Follow me.”

He wheeled his thoroughbred around and nudged the horse into a rapid, pensive walk toward a squatty cabin nearest to the half-built lodge. He jumped out of the saddle and motioned for Rose to tie up beside him.

Rose felt the space between her joints vibrate like jelly as she slid off her strawberry roan. Her mind whirled through possibilities, how could they all escape without inciting Ben’s wrath?

She gathered up her most convincingly casual voice.

“Why don’t I show Rey the mine while you discuss business, dear?” 

Rose grit her teeth, wondering if she could have sounded more forced. Damn her guileless nature and terrible poker face.

Ben’s eyes narrowed.

“You can wait with Miss Rey in the parlor,” he said. “My bookkeeper will bring you something to drink.”

_ Rather, he’ll watch me like a prison guard, _ Rose thought reproachfully.

They stepped inside the small cabin where a couple of shaker chairs were sprawled beside a great service desk with a tiny man hunched over it. Wooden cubbies jammed with papers lined the back wall behind the desk, perhaps filled with miners’ payment or letters or both. The man looked up as Ben, Maz, Rose and Rey entered. 

“Mr. Solo!” The bookkeeper chirped, scrambling from his perch behind the desk.

“Not now, Mr. Garrels.”

The bookkeeper nervously pushed up and down the rolled sleeves of his faded shirt.

“But sir!”

“Can’t you see I have business, Mr. Garrels?”

Ben waved off at the hovering clerk like he was batting away a fly. He started toward the back room and motioned for Maz to follow. Rose felt Rey’s hand bump into hers. Out of Ben’s view, Rey squeezed.

“It can’t wait, sir!” the bookkeeper insisted.

Mr. Garrels grabbed at Solo’s sleeve and pulled him down, whispering conspiratorially with furtive glances at Maz.

“It’s him,” Rose was certain she heard the clerk say. “The boys swear it's the red one!”

In an instant, the little cabin narrowed with tension so tight, Rose felt the walls crowding in close to her body. Breath sank like mercury in her lungs, she felt Rey grip her with dread. Ben stood slowly, a compounding rage building palpably between his shoulders. He turned to face Maz.

“Who did you come with?” His voice was like granite scraping together, fury twisted his features.

“Excuses-moi?” The madame scoffed, nonchalant as ever.

“You’ve seen him, haven’t you.” Solo’s colossal frame seemed to fill the shrinking cabin, his eyes darkened, the pupils like great, vacuous holes swallowing the thin light.

“I don’t play in riddles, Monsieur Solo,” Maz said with a smirk. She stepped toward him, defying his menace and wearing an exultant radiance on her deep brown features.

“This is all some kind of trap,” Solo seethed. “He put you up to this.”

“You are wrong Monsieur Solo,” Maz chuckled. She lifted a slim, ivory-handled LeMat grapeshot revolver, pointing its smug little mouth at him. “We don’t need a man to tell us when one of our own is not being treated the way she deserves.”

Outside the cabin, shouts rang out across the canyon punctuated by the echoing blast of gunfire. One shot, then two. Hoofbeats grew in the distance. Rose felt her heart leap with the sound of a familiar voice. 

_ “Hiya!” _

Hope ballooned in her chest, threatening to snap her little ribs with joy. 

“But yes, if you must know.” Maz cocked her pistol. “Monsieur Hux went along with  ma petite conspiration, how lucky Rey and I were to meet him on the road. He does have a rare talent few men possess: listening to women.” She gave Ben a triumphant grin. “It is a pity I will not give you the opportunity to learn it.”

Rey did not wait. She lunged, flinging open the door and shoving Rose outside.

With a deafening pop behind her, Rose heard Maz fire.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
> The actual Wilshire Bishop Creek Mine was built in 1906. Here are some amazing photos of the Cyanide House, machine hoist and separating drum at this particular mine:  
> https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/bishopvisitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Bullion-news-298x400.jpg
> 
> Yeah. Sodium cyanide is STILL used in gold mining, and it causes major contamination. Current gold extraction operations are using the same excuses they did back when people took cocaine "for health." https://www.earthworks.org/issues/cyanide/

**Author's Note:**

> Check out some of my other stories:
> 
> For a [short, funny and crass GingerRose,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26006500/chapters/63231019) read about a Dwight Schrute-esque Hux helping Rose get back into the Star Wars Universe.
> 
> If you're somebody who eats organic and hates 'the man,' try this [comedic one-night-stand.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24847708)
> 
> Thanks for reading! Be sure to smash that subscribe button to get the next update! 😘


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